State Pensions, PAYE and unfairness

Not all the taxpayers I look after have high incomes. From time to time I help pensioners and others whose means are quite small.

It may surprise many, but there are some people whose only taxable income is from the UK State Pension. Quite often it is enhanced by the additional State Pension, previously known as the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) and the State Second Pension. This does not mean that those pensioners are living the high life. Their total income might well be no more than £11,000 or £12,000 a year, but that is more than the current Age Allowance of £10,500, frozen by the Chancellor, George Osborne. That means that those pensioners have a tax liability.

Quite a few new pensioners with higher State Pensions are unaware that they have a liability to tax. In fact many are unaware that State Pensions are taxable at all. In the past year or so, I have come across such individuals who have suddenly found themselves with unexpected tax demands and on one occasion a demand for four years’ tax all at once.

I took on the poor chap who had paid HMRC for four years’ tax, and found that actually he owed nothing because HMRC had overlooked his entitlement to the Married Couples Allowance. This actually eliminated his supposed liabilities, but he died before I got the tax back. His widow received the payment.

However, there are others who are receiving tax demands on their State (and only) Pensions out of the blue, and still do have a tax liability. Surely it would be less painful to bring taxable state benefits into PAYE and ensure that no one receives any unexpected shocks? After all, these are by definition people on low incomes, and it cannot be expected that they will have any savings out of which they pay tax. Generally they spend what they receive at that income level, and who can blame them?

Better still, why not exempt from tax any amounts of State Pension in excess of the Age Allowance or Personal Allowance as applicable. After all, these pensioners have done their bit.

What do you think?

HMRC errors and the older taxpayer

Post-modernism

Recently I was looking on-line for the first time at the record of a taxpayer who has been retired for thirty years. As one would expect, he isn't exactly in the first flush of youth, and although very much “on the ball” to the extent of doing his supermarket delivery order on-line, I don't expect him to be well up with our modern tax system.

Modern is a term I should use loosely. Of course I mean “current” in that the system creaks badly because HMRC relies too much on automation and their computer systems, and have extracted the human element too much or too early.

Mystery

My older taxpayer's record showed that he had had £1,500 tax coded out from his pension in 2011-12. That is quite a lot, and I could not see where this previous apparent underpayment of tax had arisen. The on-line details were not sufficiently specific.

We asked for an explanation from HMRC over the telephone, but the agent could not help and said he would arrange for a letter of explanation to be sent.

To HMRC's credit, that letter arrived within two weeks. However it explained that the underpayment of tax had arisen in 2005-06 but had been collected in 2008-09 so it hadn't needed to be collected again.

Goalpost shifting

All this is a bit worrying. In an era where HMRC wants to move the goalposts further than they have already done informally with regard to ESC A19 because they say they are better at end-of-year reconciliation of liabilities, I cannot see how they would have picked up this error from way back if someone like me hadn’t picked it up.

Crying foul

We expect HMRC to hold errant taxpayers to account. We expect them to collect “the right amount of tax” by which I mean the amount properly due under the law. Unfortunately we as taxpayers do not seem to be able to hold HMRC to account over their errors.

I am going to ask for interest on the refund due as a consequence over and above the generous 0% currently prescribed. I will be wasting my time no doubt, but my older pensioner has been deprived of a not inconsiderable amount of money over twelve months. He should be entitled to compensation, don't you think?

PAYE overpayments, underpayments and intrusions

This week has seen a media-whipped furore over the inadequacies of the PAYE system and I am not going to expand on what others have said. If you want a sensible summary of the position then please look here.

There are a couple of worrying things which go beyond the “failure” of HMRC's PAYE system. It has to be remembered that Dave Hartnett, the Permanent Secretary for Tax, who has taken a lot of flak for a slightly undiplomatic comment on BBC's Money Box is not a politician but a Civil Servant. If he were politician he would perhaps be more careful, but anyway he would gave been out of office with the change in Government if he had been simply in the pocket of Alastair Darling and more significantly, Gordon Brown. Of course in the longer term there might be a conflict with the new administration, but Mr. Hartnett has been in the higher echelons of HMRC for a while now.

The point is that the cumbersome PAYE system is not perfect. It is better than it was in providing information and that is how the discrepancies in tax collected have come to light. HMRC has been forced to make many spending cuts over the last few years, which can't have helped. These were mainly driven by Gordon Brown as Mr. Hartnett told a number of tax practitioners on the one occasion a couple of years ago when I had a chance to talk to him. If the system were perfect we would not be having a new consultation which is now in play to see how it can be overhauled.

Mr. Hartnett can be careless with his words as he was on the radio and perhaps when talking to us tax advisers a couple of years ago. He may be overly suspicious of motives behind questions as he seemed a little paranoid about the supposed involvement of all tax advisers in tax avoidance when he addressed the meeting I was at.

That does not mean that his privacy should be treated as a target by the media Yes, he is in charge of an important Government department, and should be more media-savvy. However, he didn't get to the top because he was no good. He was a successful Inspector of Taxes and was involved in a number of high profile cases on the Revenue's behalf. He is at the top because he is good and not because he is a politician.

I knew he lived in Hertfordshire because he told our group. I have no interest in his house or what cars his family owns. He is not a footballer or rock star who feeds off media interest and is seen as fair game for exposés (if anyone should be?). What he has, he has earned, but it is none of our business, and nor is it the business of a possibly fictional neighbour of his, quoted in a Sunday newspaper story.