subject: Why Are Millions Owed In Income Tax Repayments? [print this page] Why is it that there are so many tax payers who are due a tax reclaim from the Inland Revenue?Some people claim that it is that the Government wish to hang on to taxpayers hard earned cash as long as they can. I doubt that very much. I am sure that they are unable to correctly assess the tax in the first place and then again it just takes them for ever to make a refund.I rang the paye tax help line recently and the recorded introductory message says that refunds are taking an average of four weeks to process.It is said that one of the reasons for the delay is the extra checks on security that have been brought in before they actually make the repayment.The other thing that I find so worrying is that when on the telephone you hang on for ever and ever. Clearly the level of service is just not acceptable.Then when you keep hanging on the phone they give you the very many options and after you have made your choice and waited for a while you are then advised that they are receiving high call volumes and then they simply hang up. Just imagine any business in the real world that did that. I do not think they would last very long.The amounts of money involved are vast. It was revealed by the National Audit Office (NAO) in July 2010 that there are some 18 million unresolved tax cases involving some 15.4 million tax payers.It is thought that about 50% of those cases are
where repayments are due to tax payers who could be due some 3billion.There is considerable annoyance about the number of telephone calls that go unanswered.It has been estimated that some 44 million calls remain unanswered every year.The latest figures from the NAO show
that about one third of telephone calls are answered during peak times. Callers are in fact charged whilst they hang on.Basic mistakes made by Revenue officials cause real headaches for taxpayers every year.They often incorrectly issue tax codes which can contain mistakes resulting in excessive paye tax being deducted from employees.Recently I have seen gross errors where they have allocated people to different companies simply by being unable to properly enter their own employers reference number properly. You would think that they would have some elementary system of checking for this kind of elementary error. It's not as if they are trying to land a man on the moon! One of the common reasons why people are due a tax reclaim is that they may leave their employment part way through a tax year and then will not have had the full benefit of a years free pay allowance. Another possible reason could be that they used to receive personal benefits that are no longer enjoyed such as car or medical but they remain in the PAYE coding.
by: Peter Jones
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