Because of the work I do, it’s complicated, I have two sources of income and a pension on which I pay income tax as PAYE or Pay As You Earn. This March I got a notification for my tax coding indicating that on my pension and one of my jobs I would pay tax at 40%. After a prolonged period of phoning I managed to contact a person who checked and agreed I did not earn enough money to pay tax on my income at 40%.  This was followed by two new confirmation letters indicating tax would be at the basic rate.

However, the tax office failed to notify the pension agency and one of my employers so I started paying  tax at 40% in April. I was able to send a copy of the new confirmation of tax coding to my employer who made the necessary changes in May. Great, well almost.

The pension agency are unable to change the coding as it is done directly through an electronic transfer so can only be changed by the tax office!

6 months later and a letter to the tax office advising them of the mistake and it’s still not done. Numerous phone calls are met by an automated system that drops the call if it’s not answered. You then have to redial and go through the system again, only to be cuts off if no one answers.

The reason for this and there’s 6 million tax payers with the same sort of problem is a change to the computer system the tax office uses?. It would appear, in my case, that the system automatically puts any person with more that one source of income into the higher taxation band regardless!

The simplicity of PAYE is that it is possible for almost everyone to work out their tax, yet the computer system used by the tax office is unable to make a simple calculation to take all earned income less allowance and work out the tax on what’s left.

Can you email them to point out the mistake has not been rectified? It appears not, so you either write letter that don’t get acknowledged or you phone and waste time and energy trying to contact them.

Not only does the tax payer bails out the banks when through their own greed and indulgence they manage to create a world finacial melt down, we then have to pay more tax than we should whilst the tax office sorts it out. Surely they should have done rigorous testing before going live with the system.

For my part it is causing us as a family some financial hardship as I am now owned hundreds of pounds that should not have been taken and has completely screwed up my budgeting. I should eventually get it back but when?

Have you had a problem with your tax or have you been able to find a way to get it sorted quickly? Let me know.