Partner Article

And finally…….time-wasting ‘HMRC style’?

Whilst, at the ‘top-end’, HMRC is to be congratulated on its increasingly effective initiatives to tackle avoidance and evasion, at the ‘lower end’ the public at large may not be getting such a good deal.

Admittedly, HMRC’s task of administering a highly complex tax regime is a daunting one, however why is it that the department often seems to go out of its way to complicate and confuse matters and cause an unnecessary waste of time?

One such example concerns what should be the simple tax repayment form for children known as an R40. We are seeing examples of cases where forms R40 have been submitted and refunds made, only to be followed by HMRC issuing a late filing penalty.

How can such a situation possibly arise?

Well, as the child in question was in receipt of trust income, HMRC insisted that a formal tax return was required, despite having already processed the R40, which does include a section for trust income. The formal tax return was duly submitted to replicate the information on the R40 and as this was technically ‘late’, a penalty was raised.

The good news is that upon appeal, the penalty was reduced to nil, however the bad news was that HMRC made another identical tax repayment, which was duly sent back to HMRC…!

So come on HMRC, stop wasting everyone’s time - including your own - and be reminded of the department’s service commitment to do all you can to keep the cost of dealing with the department as low as possible.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Baker Tilly .