Good afternoon all!
I haven't been online for a while, because of work and family commitments and, like some of the new posters got myself into a spiral of depression/ anger/ frustration and couldn't bear to see how Our Government and Public Servants can, time and time again, hound members of their public to such levels of desperation.
I 'popped' on today, to seek advice on how best to contact HMRC and to get a reasonable, or even a reasoned, response. My problem (and my wife's too) started over 20 years ago - with Montpelier - and, like many I was new to contracting back then and followed some peers and some dodgy (crooked?) advice to be tax efficient.
We followed the same bad advice in subsequent years until it got to the point where the risk of what seemed ever more like a negative outcome just became too much, and we took steps to settle.
... and then it seems to have snowballed.
For some reason, our cases were being dealt with by different HMRC teams (same name but different locations) and they were giving us conflicting advice. The teams also seemed to be impossible to get hold of and over time they changed their names and email addresses as they moved around the Midlands and the North West - and we haven't heard from them for a number of years now.
Our communication seems to be limited to different debt management teams now, occasionally with some correspondence from the SA teams and, once, an intimidating visit from a reasonably dressed thug, who was trying to see over my shoulder into the house and was gesturing to my wife and son's cars to suggest he'd take them in lieu of the "DEBT".
We made a significant payment (c£70k) some years ago, thinking we'd end the pain, but that just triggered more and more demands - I think we'd paid the accelerated payments (APs) but then there were demands for surcharges, and follower penalties, and interest, and late payment fees, so the amount we still owe is around £100k. Out of desperation, and some fear that I'm getting to the age where I may not be working much longer, we started to make plans, to suck it up and start to pay off.
In the past year we've paid around another £30k but we have tried to argue that for some of the years they've assessed us for being with Montpelier, we'd actually retained and worked through our limited company because, although HMRC would accept that contract, another client would not - so for 3 of the 5 years they've invented a debt, we actually paid Corporation Tax and were not paid through Montpelier.
The conversations I've had in recent years, with DM and SA teams have all said they don't have access to any useful information as they are all siloed (and uninterested) so I was going to look for advice on whether to write to the HMRC DG to see if that would gain any traction across the void(s)?
Seeing this thread though - and why I'm not quite hijacking it - I see that two of the years we were mistakenly charged for are 2002 and 2003. I still need to resolve my other years of paying/ being charged for substantial Corporation Tax and Self Assessment Tax but will get onto my MP about the early years (Graham Brady)
Thank you guys for the help, reassurance and comfort you gave me in the past (I'm still here!!) and to those you continue to help now...
I haven't been online for a while, because of work and family commitments and, like some of the new posters got myself into a spiral of depression/ anger/ frustration and couldn't bear to see how Our Government and Public Servants can, time and time again, hound members of their public to such levels of desperation.
I 'popped' on today, to seek advice on how best to contact HMRC and to get a reasonable, or even a reasoned, response. My problem (and my wife's too) started over 20 years ago - with Montpelier - and, like many I was new to contracting back then and followed some peers and some dodgy (crooked?) advice to be tax efficient.
We followed the same bad advice in subsequent years until it got to the point where the risk of what seemed ever more like a negative outcome just became too much, and we took steps to settle.
... and then it seems to have snowballed.
For some reason, our cases were being dealt with by different HMRC teams (same name but different locations) and they were giving us conflicting advice. The teams also seemed to be impossible to get hold of and over time they changed their names and email addresses as they moved around the Midlands and the North West - and we haven't heard from them for a number of years now.
Our communication seems to be limited to different debt management teams now, occasionally with some correspondence from the SA teams and, once, an intimidating visit from a reasonably dressed thug, who was trying to see over my shoulder into the house and was gesturing to my wife and son's cars to suggest he'd take them in lieu of the "DEBT".
We made a significant payment (c£70k) some years ago, thinking we'd end the pain, but that just triggered more and more demands - I think we'd paid the accelerated payments (APs) but then there were demands for surcharges, and follower penalties, and interest, and late payment fees, so the amount we still owe is around £100k. Out of desperation, and some fear that I'm getting to the age where I may not be working much longer, we started to make plans, to suck it up and start to pay off.
In the past year we've paid around another £30k but we have tried to argue that for some of the years they've assessed us for being with Montpelier, we'd actually retained and worked through our limited company because, although HMRC would accept that contract, another client would not - so for 3 of the 5 years they've invented a debt, we actually paid Corporation Tax and were not paid through Montpelier.
The conversations I've had in recent years, with DM and SA teams have all said they don't have access to any useful information as they are all siloed (and uninterested) so I was going to look for advice on whether to write to the HMRC DG to see if that would gain any traction across the void(s)?
Seeing this thread though - and why I'm not quite hijacking it - I see that two of the years we were mistakenly charged for are 2002 and 2003. I still need to resolve my other years of paying/ being charged for substantial Corporation Tax and Self Assessment Tax but will get onto my MP about the early years (Graham Brady)
Thank you guys for the help, reassurance and comfort you gave me in the past (I'm still here!!) and to those you continue to help now...
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