HMRC chasing employer for tax allegedly owed from 2010-11

A question about : HMRC chasing employer for tax allegedly owed from 2010-11

We've had two letters from HMRC debt management section stating that we owe them over Ј4000 (including interest) for underpaid tax and NI from 2010-11. The second was dated two days after I spoke to them, and said that we hadn't been in contact, so I can only assume that the computer which sends those letters out doesn't talk to the smoke signals used to record phone conversations.

I'm as sure as a mere mortal can be that we do NOT owe this money: I've had our payroll company send us a summary of what was due that year, and I've checked that against what we actually paid, and I've compared the figures with what HMRC say was due to them, and it all tallies.

The debt section won't send anything in writing to back up this claim. They will read figures out over the phone, but they say there are a lot of transfers in and out, and they need a technical expert to look at it. On my second phone call, I was told I could ask the Employer's payroll section in Cumbernauld to send us a record of what we paid, in writing.

So, I've written to Cumbernauld to ask for the information, and I've sent a complaint to the debt management section. Anything else I can do?

I know there were a lot of transfers that year and the previous year - at the time we were running two payrolls (which HMRC agreed was OK, although I know it's unusual) and some payments ended up in the wrong account. I've dredged up correspondence from June 2010 relating to 2008-09 and 2009-10: I have NO idea if they actually acted on those letters which should have left everything all square for 2010-11. I spent hours back then trying to get things sorted, multiple phone calls giving details of a payment which ended up in a suspense account asking them to apply it correctly.

And surely, if we owed money at the end of 2010-11, the time to ask for it was then, not now? And if that's the case, surely we have the right to have a list, on paper, of the payments they think we made? Just dictating a list of payments (which actually seems to back up MY position not theirs) doesn't quite do the job!

I know I shouldn't be surprised: in May last year our payroll company wrote to explain we'd made a small overpayment in 2013-14, so could we transfer this to 2014-15. In November HMRC rang us to say they'd had a letter which they couldn't act on because our payroll co. weren't authorised with them. They told the payroll co. the same thing, but wouldn't tell them what the letter (from the payroll co.) said - and the person who'd written it had left so it took a bit of digging to find the details. Obviously I got them authorised, and asked them to sort it out, but nothing yet ... and our payroll co. say that whatever we do, we shouldn't just withhold that overpayment this year or they'll fine us!

Best answers:

• Hopefully Cumbernauld will sort things out and you'll be proved right that you don't owe anything, but don't you think that knowing there had been issues with the 2008-9 and 2009-10 payments that it might have been in your best interests to actually check at the time (or at least after the end of 2010-1 tax year) that the letters you sent in June 2010 were acted on?
• I beleive I am correct in saying that HMRC cannot go back further than 4 years unless there is evidence of careless behaviour on the part of the employer. You should check this, they've been moving the goalposts around on this sort of thing ever since the great PAYE scandal broke and I would call my tax hotline if it were a client issue.
  It seems to me pretty clear that you took reasonable steps to sort out the matter at the time. The last poster perhaps does not appreciate that it is far from unusual to make 3 or 4 phone calls AND write 2 or 3 times to HMRC over even simple PAYE matters and still nothing happens.
  I would be fighting this drivel every step of the way. Over in the real world, if I were to write to someone and say:
  "You owe me Ј4k from 2010 which I failed to invoice properly at the time, please pay up"
  I would expect them to just laugh in my face. I know you won't be laughing, but it is another example of a
  Hideous Muddle from a Right Charlie.
• Believe me, I did my best at the time ... I'm not at work today, and the files from those years are archived - I can find my letters to them on the computer, but any they wrote to me are likely to be in the loft at work. The boxes are all beautifully labelled, but I'm not great at getting up the ladder, and it's not very warm up there, so finding stuff is going to be 'interesting'.
  Although thinking about it, I might be able to find an email trail where I reported to my manager what was going on ...
  And yes, in an ideal world you'd chase and check these things at the time, but dealing with HMRC was a very small part of my extremely heavy workload at the time, and it may have been the triumph of hope over experience - you talk to someone who says "oh yes I can see what's happened, I'll sort it out for you" and you write to confirm the conversation and hope it happens. But you never know how long to leave it before checking it has happened ...
  Anyway, another reason I'm sure we don't owe money is that at the time, whenever we missed or appeared to have missed a payment, someone from HMRC would phone up and ask what we were playing at. And I'd investigate, and sort it, either by saying "no, you're wrong, the money should be there, payment made this date, that ref, cleared on our bank a/c" or by going "whoops, you're right, I'll get straight onto that." So how, four years later, they find a missing payment, I do not know!
• Savvy_Sue,
  Based on what you have just posted and your general postings on this site, I will happily bet Ј10,000 to win Ј2,000 that the fault lies with HMRC and not with you. In my view there is great value in this bet, as there must be at least a 95% chance that this is an HMRC howler, one of many.
  First establish whether they are out of time, if they are tell them to get stuffed. Then ask them for a proper breakdown - not just their usual drivel of "underpayment x" but a proper statement of submissions and payments which you can tie back to bank statements. Even this can often prove "too difficult" for them, so also consider a Data Protection Act "producer" to force them to send copies of all relevant information. They absolutely hate having to do those.