Chris

Having written to HMRC on the same day I posted my last comment above, and having had no response to that letter, when I opened my emails today to find one indicating there was a new message waiting in my tax account mailbox, my spirits dropped - it was via this route that I'd been notified about my first "late payment" penalty last year... However, it came as a VERY pleasant surprise when, on logging into my account, I first noticed that the "you owe us and it's late" message on the front page was missing, and then after opening my mailbox finding the new message was an updated tax statement to show that, miracle of miracles, the tax owed from last year was now being repaid via PAYE just as I'd requested. Not *quite* believing my eyes, I then checked the other pages of my account and sure enough my PAYE code for this coming tax year has indeed now been adjusted as required to take the owed amount throughout the year... So whilst there are still questions that HMRC really do need to answer over why their systems seem incapable of simply processing our requests without the need for us to kick up a fuss, and in the meantime find ourselves falsely accused of being late payers, let's at least give them some credit where it's due here for, in my case at least, finally sorting things out. Hope they've been able to do the same for everyone else here similarly affected.

Wouldn't it be rather useful if information like this was proactively made available to us, either via online FAQs or provided to us in writing INSTEAD OF the generic "you're late paying, here's a penalty" letters we end up getting when something like this happens? Why is it up to us to beg for answers to questions that so many of us are having, and why is the default position of HMRC to assume we're genuine non-payers rather than giving us the benefit of the doubt, especially when you can see we've requested to repay via PAYE, and you then know that you haven't yet received all the information you need from OTHERS - i.e. it's not something WE'VE done wrong - in order to action that request?

Dominik, last years problem was "resolved" insomuch as HMRC, after first telling me various other reasons why things hadn't gone as expected, eventually admitted there was a mistake in how my tax account had been set up on their systems and which had prevented my request to repay via tax code being actioned. Consequently they issued an immediate refund of all the penalty payments I'd been told I had to make, however I was still left then having to pay the full original amount owed in a single hit, as it was then clearly too late to set up the tax code repayment as desired. So whilst I was happy they'd finally admitted it was all their mistake and nothing I'd done wrong, it was still not the best of outcomes in terms of being able to repay what I owed in the more gradual manner I was expecting. That was last year... As of right now, my tax account is now once again suggesting that I'm late in repaying, despite still having met all the criteria for being able to repay via tax code. So it wouldn't surprise me if HMRC receive yet another barrage of increasingly irate letters from me this year until they once again admit they've messed things up.

Likewise - requested to repay my 2021-22 bill via my tax code, met all the stated critera, then had a few reminder emails in January that the payment deadline was approaching which also included the wording "Already paid, set up a Direct Debit or chosen to pay through your tax code? Thank you – you don’t need to do anything else.". Having chosen to do that, and not having heard anything from HMRC to indicate this wouldn't be possible, it seemed entirely reasonable that I could believe the email when it said I didn't need to do anything else. So you can imagine my surprise and dismay when, a couple of months later, I was notified that due to failing to pay by the end of January, I'd been penalised. Now that we've entered the new tax year, I can also see that my tax code has definitely not been adjusted, so it does indeed appear that my request has been silently ignored/refused, leaving me with having to repay in full ASAP (with the resultant short-term strain on my finances it'll incur) as well as hoping the appeal I submitted against the penalty/interest is a success. To say that I'm not happy at this would be putting it mildly - I genuinely don't understand what I've done wrong to have been deemed ineligible for repayment via tax code, or why I've then been penalised for failing to make a payment I wasn't aware I needed to make until HMRC told me I'd been penalised for not having made it already...