I received a tax rebate! Yay! Not a life changing amount, but enough to make me smile.

No bad thing on the whole, but this was for FY 2011/2012..! I filled in a self assesment that year, and had no need to expect a rebate. So why have they only now got round to deciding to send some money?

Should I be worried, as I am the perrenially suspicious type.

careful, I’ve had some very good quality phishing emails purporting to be from HMRC.

They are basically understaffed, there was quite a hoo harr about it a few years back..and I guess issuing rebates are lower priority than chasing unpaid tax.

I wouldn’t worry about it.

Edit..Yeah they won’t generally email you about a rebate, normally a confusing letter followedw by a cheque a few weks later.

as others have said, and as someone who works for an IT supplier to HMRC, if it’s an email, you need to ignore it. it will not be legit.

The letters are amazing, was convinced I owed them more money then checked my account and they had credited me. Spent half a hour sorting it out on the phone. Clear as mud.

Nope, certainly not phishing, as they have sent me a cheque, that’s already cashed into my account!

The current government , in their wisdom sacked most of the poor buggers a few years ago, so whether you’re Starbucks or a sole trader, they just haven’t got the staff to chase down your taxes.

False economy? Yep!

Not always a good idea to ignore real HMRC emails if you have chosen to receive comms from them that way.

But you can check your online account to access them. Then discover they do actually want some tax after all from years ago. maybe? possibly? who knows? I’m paying them anyway and if im wrong they will send it back eventually.

They’re slow because they’ve been culled to the bone by Osbourne in order to help more of his mates avoid paying what they own…

Understaffed or not, their communication is still pants.

As a business I often have to communicate with them and they couldn’t me more useless if they tried. Eventually when I find someone who can help they agree that they are a shambles.

1. They’ve always been slow – or at least that’s my experience of doing self assessment for the best part of 15 years – and they’ve been changing their minds on what people owe for a good deal longer than that
2. They haven’t been “culled to the bone”. More assessments are done on line / automated so the number of staff has reduced in line with the reduced need for processing of paper based returns.

On the “rich” the facts are somewhat wide of the “osborne has helped his mates avoid tax” line:

– the top 1% of earners (45% tax bracket)earners now pay a record amount of tax – rising from 24.4% under Labour to 27.5% under the current government – and are scheduled to carry on rising until they pay 34% by 2020.
– The top 10% pay of earners (anyone who is in or above the 40% tax bracket) now pay around 60% of all tax
– The majority of working adults make no net contribution to the running of the state, with half of adults paying no tax at all.
– Prosecutions by HMRC have risen more than 5 fold since 2010

Obsorne needs to keep pulling the money in to pay for the “austerity” – the DWP spent £4B more on a small number of benefits including working tax credits, Disability Living allowance and JSA last year than 2013/2014.

Some of them cannot send emails. They do have fax machines, and probably can even telex you.

Oh, and I had a VAT inspector who didn’t understand how you can sell stuff via the internet.

That took several months to sort out 🙁

On the “rich” the facts are somewhat wide of the “osborne has helped his mates avoid tax” line:

Not really, most of his mates will be in the 0.1% or lower bracket, ie the super wealthy, who pay virtually no tax in the UK, people like Philip Green, who pays his money to his wife in Monaco to avoid UK tax….

Or the great deal he did with Google which then turned into a PR farse when no one else thought it was anything like enough….

As for the top 10% paying a bigger share or tax, would you expect anything less? Surely the more you earn, the more tax you should pay?

Read the PAC minutes.

just5minutes, it’s quite sad that you seem to actually believe that tosh you’re spouting. the staff have been cut much faster than automation has come in and it’s still happening.
HMRC have not been cut, they have been deliberately butchered to prevent them doing their work properly. Every area of the department has been chopped and disrupted and it’s still ongoing; they’ve to lose another 10,000 staff in the next five years, before any of the new systems are actually working correctly. Changes are made to drive down cost, not improve service to the public or UK PLC. Once the office closure programme starts to bite (91% of offices to close, with many experienced staff to be laid off as they live to far from big cities to commute), there will be no ‘Compliance’ staff left in most of the UK, just those 13 hub cities. Who will police the south coast of England, the southwest, middle & north wales, most of Scotland and many huge areas in between..?
The PAC has been scathing of the cuts and even parliament is criticising the failure of the cabinet to consult with its own people at Westminster.
Unfortunately, the sentiments of Footflaps are correct; Osbourne & Cameron do not want HMRC to actually do its job of securing the correct tax yield.

highlandman – even after the “cuts” HMRC has nearly 5 times as many staff (when adjusted for the number of employers / individual tax payers) as the equivalent IRS in the USA. Both process / collect individual and corporation taxes.

IRS doesn’t deal with paying out most of the country’s benefits/tax credits, Excise duties, Customs tarrifs nor does it administer the local and state taxes (vat equivalent), so not really comparing like with like.
HMRC is massively under-resourced and already has less than half the staff of just 10 years ago, even before you look at the areas that have been privatised out to some appallingly bad service providers.

Its quality, not quantity that we need.

IRS doesn’t deal with paying out most of the country’s benefits/tax credits

Doesn’t DWP do that?

My understanding was that they had changed internal systems which meant they were clearing the backlog and recalculating some.

Paying people money back is probably not high on HMRCs priorities.

Paying people money back is probably not high on HMRCs priorities.

This. still waiting for my refund. Every time you chase the answer is; call back in 6 weeks and see whether there is any progress. Original ETA was 3-4 weeks. 5 months later…

Last time I owed them any money there was (unsurprisingly) a very different attitude regarding the speed of payment. TBH I’m tempted to just leave it there as invariably it’ll all go full circle come the next period.

Heaven knows what it’s like for anyone with complicated tax affairs. I’m just simple PAYE but HMRC really don’t seem to be able to get things stable / correct.