HMRC and writers - if something is wrong, query it.

 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.

https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-report/2024/03/mr-tinker-versus-the-taxman-hmrc-loan-charge-scandal

Pride and Productivity - Cecilia Busby

There is, apparently, a productivity problem in the UK. It's something that's been exercising the Chancellor, George Osborne, in recent months. Here he is, looking unhappy about it...

Of course, there are many reasons for this low productivity and a good few of them are issues that we would probably all agree need dealing with: housing is too expensive so people are forced to live too far away from their work, transport links are poor, wages are low, there is a lack of skills training...

But these are all things that could be equally said to be a cause of low levels of well-being in our society. They need to be dealt with because they cause misery rather than low productivity. Productivity itself is something that I feel ambivalent about, and that's because for me, it can often run counter to another important aspect of working life: pride.

Whatever you do, you can increase your productivity by just doing it faster or doing more of it in a day. In many parts of the economy, this seems to be exactly what has been asked of workers as a result of a relentless focus on profit and 'efficiency', two other things that increase when productivity increases. Councils contract out services to the private sector because it's more 'efficient'. The NHS is reorganised in order to make it more 'efficient'. Universities and schools are told to cut costs and deliver more 'education' while also being monitored for quality.

How do they achieve this miraculous increase in productivity? By processing more patients, washing, dressing and feeding more elderly people, emptying more dustbins and passing more young people through their degree courses in less time and with fewer workers.

Hurrah! More productivity!

But what's this? Workers feel less satisfied. They have to offer the elderly people they care for a brisk ten minutes instead of being able to relax with a cup of tea and a chat. They are tired and stressed by their work routines and expectations. They publish research that they haven't had enough time to get right, they can't support their students or patients as they'd like to, they are forced to cut corners or drive themselves into the ground trying to do their job properly.

More productivity allows companies to pay their workers higher wages. That should make them happier. But there's the thing.  There are growing numbers of self-employed people in the UK at the moment, and while in general they earn less than their employed counterparts and work longer hours, they are also happier and more satisfied with their work.

Their productivity - wages against hours - is clearly a lot lower. But I would hazard a guess that their happiness and satisfaction levels are higher because they are able to maintain the other important 'p' word - pride.

It's something the Arts and Crafts movement argued way back in the 19th century. Work that is done with pride, that's done with care and attention to detail, that makes us feel we have done something well, is extremely important to a sense of identity and well-being. We've all had to do rush jobs, get something done for a deadline, make compromises - but when that sort of pressure becomes the new normal, it's hard to maintain a sense of pride in your work or a sense of self-worth.

I was visited recently by a colleague from my old university department. She'd got to the stage I reached ten years ago - no longer able to maintain a sense of pride in educating young people or in carrying out research, because pressures from managers in the department and wider university meant too many students left to sink or swim without proper support (despite the huge financial debts they were being burdened with), and weak research being pushed out to satisfy quotas. She wanted to know what it was like on the other side of the fence - without the financial security of a permanent job contract. It made me think quite hard about whether I regretted jumping ship for the uncertain hand-to-mouth existence of the self-employed writer and copyeditor.

Readers, I regretted it not one jot. I may be less well paid. I may work harder. I may have extremely low levels of productivity. But I have pride. When I get slightly anxious about where the next cheque is coming from and if we can afford to replace the washing-machine, I remind myself of that. It's a tonic for the soul.


Cecilia Busby writes fantasy adventures for children aged 7-12 as C.J. Busby.

Her first series was the Spell series, an Arthurian knockabout fantasy aimed at 7-9. Her latest book, The Amber Crown, was published in March by Templar.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

@ceciliabusby

"Great fun - made me chortle!" (Diana Wynne Jones on Frogspell)

"A rift-hoping romp with great wit, charm and pace" (Frances Hardinge on Deep Amber)