Kimlee Thompson

If I transfer money from a joint bank account into an NS&I income bond in my name only, who pays the tax on the income… just me on the whole income or is the income split equally between both joint holders for income tax purposes? Thank you.

So I’m trying to submit a self-assessment tax return (capital gains) for my mother who is 92 and has no form of photo ID. So I got her a CitizenCard that is recognised by the Home Office, Police and Security Forces as a valid form of photo ID. But evidently not by HMRC. I have no idea, why, after setting up a government gateway account we need to prove our identity anyway. When I put money into a bank using the machines, I don’t need to enter my PIN number. The bank doesn’t care who’s paying money in, so why does the tax man? So long as the tax is correct and the tax man gets his dosh, why place this additional hurdle of proving identity and then making the options so restrictive! So I can’t set up online self-assessment for my mother. I don’t want to pay an accountant £300 and I don’t want to hang on the phone for over an hour to speak to someone every time I have a question. I did this on one occasion (and yes it was an hour) and the experienced adviser on the other end virtually said that without photo ID I might as well forget it! This is discrimination. Some of us are sole carers and have no clue about tax returns. We are trying to be honest and pay our family taxes and HMRC are making it virtually impossible. The adviser did send a tax return form to my mother. Well I have a degree in engineering and I couldn’t make sense of the associated “help” sheets. I didn’t get a chance to thank the adviser for being so sympathetic, because after an allotted period on the phone an automated voice cut in and said “thank you for contacting HMRC” now bugger off! Okay, it didn’t say the last part, it simply hung up the phone on the both of us. I couldn’t actually speak to anyone for months because they were trialing some new system… “If you want to speak to a real person then please contact us in September!” Maybe if HMRC made it easier for us to submit our taxes, they wouldn’t be so inundated with queries. Having now navigated all of this, I can honestly say that I have never encountered such an utterly useless system in my whole life! I can only assume they don’t want us to submit our taxes. Most people have told me that I shouldn’t be so honest. Now I understand how difficult it is to give the tax man any money, I’ll be telling anyone who asks exactly the same thing!