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 cost -cutting will cost them dear

HM Revenue and Customs has announced that in future, where a taxpayer is represented by an agent, that agent will no longer receive copies of various forms. The forms which now only taxpayers will receive include PAYE Coding Notices (really helpful as this is an area of problems currently). Other forms and letters which taxpayers' agents will no longer have include:

• Letter advising of a new Universal Tax Reference and advising that a Tax Return will have to be completed in future.
• Letter advising that a Tax Return will not be required in future.
• Tax calculation form showing HMRC's computation of the annual liability. 

HMRC thinks that they will save £1.25M in making this change. Of course in terms of paper and postage this may be true, but how much time in terms of telephone calls from agents will they waste when the taxpayers have failed to pass on the forms or in respect of Codings which should have been adjusted, but were not, due to a breakdown of communication between client and agent?

HMRC likes to refer to taxpayers as “customers”. We always say that if we taxpayers were customers we would take our business elsewhere. If we were really customers we would be contemplating loss of customer service without a cut in our charges. Anyway, in the end it is one more cut in HMRC which will make them more inefficient at a time when a few more properly qualified staff could actually bring them more money in. At the same time there is more cost and inconvenience to the public

I am all for cutting waste. It seems very short-sighted to make cuts which will end up costing more money and making communication harder. Are HMRC so deep in their dark tunnels that they have lost touch with the real world? It often seems like it.