HMRC Appeals advice

[Clippy]

Visited my accountant today to go over the figures submitted and tracked down the error.

He had included some of my Ltd company expenses as BIK when he shouldn't have as they were incurred wholly and exclusively to carry out my contract role.

He advised he would write to HMRC to advise them of this and that they would review and re-submit a new Self Assessment statement.

To the accountants - have you experienced similar scenarios where clients Self Assessments have had to be amended? How do HMRC take to this? Do they happily amend with a 'wrist slap' approach or do they dig deeper and ask for further evidence?

It's actually very common for a P11d to be submitted with vaild expenses, and HMRC to then allocate them as a BIK - something to do with the way they transfer the data onto their systems. I've had this happen to a lot of clients when what we submitted was absolutely correct.

They should simply amend the assesment and that will be the end of it.

Hmm, six weeks have passed since my accountant wrote to HMRC regarding this matter and still no sign of an amended statement.

Does it normally take this long for HMRC to review and provide an amended self assessment statement?

Bit of a pain as I need to get this wrapped up ASAP as I wish to change accountant.

[Papavar]

I had one of my SAs looked at because I stupidly missed the box about being liable for student loan re-payments on the new forms. I called HMRC and apologised for being an idiot. New SA statement arrived within a few days and I paid online straight away. A couple of weeks later I got the closure notice from HMRC. 6 weeks sounds like a long time... I'd chase them up.

[Clippy]

What an absolute palava!!

Have been chasing my accountant and HMRC to progress this for the last 2 weeks and have finally got a result.

Long story short, HMRC have amended my Self Assessment tax liability to match the figures originally submitted by my accountant so am just waiting for an amended statement to confirm this.

After talking to HMRC today, they mentioned it was amended due to an adjusted Self Assessment return dated 13 May 2010.

My question to them which they were un-able to answer is was an adjusted Self Assesssment actually submitted or was my original Self Assessment amended by HMRC based on a letter of appeal my accountant wrote in March.

In my mind, it should have been the latter (letter of appeal) as that, to my understanding, is the defined process.

However, if resolving this quickly was simply a case of submitting an amended Self Assessment I would have got my accountant to do this months ago.

Anyone know?