Economia reports that a survey, conducted by Bloomsbury Professional, highlights a consensus amongst those taxpayers surveyed that delays by HMRC in paying tax rebates are worsening.
Martin Casimir, Bloomsbury’s managing director, is quoted:
“HMRC does not pay any interest on tax repayments which effectively gives it an incentive to drag its heels.Delays in the payments of rebates have been discussed on this site before. Therefore, as ever, I am interested in hearing the views of loyal readers.
The concern for taxpayers is that the amounts involved can be substantial, which can cause serious cashflow problems.
Businesses have been known to get into financial difficulty, or even go bust, while waiting for a tax rebate from HMRC.”
Do you agree with the survey's conclusion?
UPDATE
Oops, red faces all round.
As was quite correctly pointed out yesterday, by a loyal and observant reader, Martin Casimir's assertion that HMRC does not pay interest on tax repayments is wrong. HMRC (as I noted in the comments section) does in fact pay 0.5% (perversely it charges 3% for late payments).
I wrote to Martin yesterday about it, and Bloomsbury have acknowledged that they were wrong and will be asking Economia to correct their copy.
It is shameful that Economia (the professional magazine of the ICAEW) and myself (an FCA) didn't spot it when we published Martin's quotes!
So well done and thanks for pointing that out, and mea culpa on my part for being asleep yesterday!
Tax does have to be taxing.
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“HMRC does not pay any interest on tax repayments which effectively gives it an incentive to drag its heels"
ReplyDeleteEPIC FAIL!!!!! Yes it does. I hope the rest of Bloomsbury Professional is more, um, professional than this.........
Nice to see the private sector has its own f**ckwits.....lol.
DeleteGood point, I have sent Economia a message about that.
DeleteHowever, there is a disparity between rates on repayments and late payments 29/09/2009 3.0% 0.5%
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/rates/interest-late-pay.htm
I don't know where they get the idea that HMRC are dragging their heels... I've just left work having been dealing with repayments (including expenses, flat rate expenses and subscriptions to name but 3) and they've all been dated as received within the last 2-3 weeks. The only dragging of heels here is the individuals making the backdated claims.
ReplyDelete"they've all been dated as received within the last 2-3 weeks"
DeleteDoes that include the time they sat in a mail room waiting to be dated?
Also bear in mind that "in year" repayments, i.e. earlier years adjustments, through the tax code haven't happened for 2 weeks due to the cut off period for payroll to use the updated coding notice. Until P14/P60 start hitting our doormat (electronic or otherwise) repayments for 11-12 will be a while longer.
ReplyDeleteEconomia is editorially independent of ICAEW. So I wouldn't make too much of the link between the two. They got a quote from a reasonable source and ran with it.
ReplyDeleteWell I certainly should have spotted it!:)
DeletePat on the back Ken. I would show my manager this, as an example of how to deal with making a mistake. I would, but I'd be facing a disciplinary for reading/contributing to the blog.............lol.
DeleteThanks:)
DeleteYou still banned from reading this then?
Yep. Or mentioning it. Or thinking about it........
DeleteWhat a daft policy!
DeleteTo stop people even looking at the site only draws more attention to it.