This is just a very quick post, but I thought I'd share in case any other self employed writer gets in a similar situation.
As writers, our income can be very sporadic. I know I should have a special savings account put aside for tax as I go along, and I want to do this from now on, but life gets in the way, cars need to be fixed etc, and so over the years I have often tended to rely on tax top-ups from eg PLR payments or my next scheduled advance.
Two days ago I received a letter from HMRC, and hopefully thought it might be a rebate. I was so shocked to find that it was the opposite. A series of late payment levies had been suddenly put on my account going back to 2020, and I was expected to pay £523 in 48 hours, as in today.
My initial thought was to ignore this as a scam, because I pay a monthly direct debit, pre-agreed with HMRC, so I knew I had not been late for any payment. However, this was about years ago back in 2020, they had all my details, the correct UTR number, and I had only last weekend read a v disturbing report about HMRC sending such threatening letters to others. (It's worth reading and I will put at the end)
So I went on the website and there saw these charges HAD been added. I knew it was very recently, because when I knew my PLR payment would be late I had specifically rung up HMRC before Christmas to organise direct debit payments from January, as I knew I could not pay the whole amount upfront. I had discussed what I owed with the advisor, and no mention of penalties from 2020 had been made.
I did what HMRC advised and asked the online help. The AI was useless, just telling me that I had to pay, so I typed in that I needed an advisor. After 16 minutes I got an online advisor, who told me to appeal in writing and send it registered post. This was one added stress, as we don't have a full time post office any more in our village, I don't drive, and time was running out. I felt trapped.
I decided to ring, as that is how I normally sort out tax issues. Some people, once I had told them it WASN'T a scam, advised me to pay the money and try to claim it back, but I didn't have that much in my account, so I would have to be overdrawn, and I just didn't trust it would be sorted quickly.
I lit a candle and prayed, and waited for over an hour in the queue, and then suddenly was told that they did not have enough advisors and was cut off and to try again. HOWEVER an alternative number had been given in the periodic answerphone announcements encouraging me to go online for help, and I had jotted it down, so I rang that, and after only ten minutes I got through to an amazing man, who went back though my accounts, saw I had never defaulted, read all the direct debit agreements, and cancelled all the penalties. He wasn't sure how the mistake had been made, but he thought that the system had seen I wasn't paying the full amount upfront and assumed that meant I was always late, and so penalised me again and again, ignoring that I had always put agreed arrangements in place when I didn't have money to pay.
I feel so relieved and grateful today and I wanted to share this in case anyone else is put in this position. If you have a problem with HMRC, always phone them, even if you have to wait for over 40 minutes, or get cut off & have to try again - but if you do get through to an advisor, I have always found them to be so helpful and on top of things. The problem is that there is not enough of them, and something seems to be wrong with the system if it can't cope with pre-organised direct debit arrangements, and sends such threatening letters. Luckily it wasn't for the amounts described in this article, but it was fully stressful enough.
1 comment:
I hope a compliment on your writing doesn't seem out of place (given the subject matter) but this was so lucid and well-written and helpful. Thank you for posting. And I'm glad you got the problem sorted.
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