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 TaxHelp for Older People |
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TaxHelp for Older People |
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Meet the
Operations
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SOME TOP
CASE HISTORIES Mrs A needed help with form R40 to reclaim overpaid
tax. When the repayment arrived, it was checked by TOP who found
that it was short by £40. The Inland Revenue were chased and the
extra £40 repaid. Mr B was faced with a £700 underpayment because no
restriction had been set against his Married Couples Allowance. TOP
pointed out the Inland Revenue error and the arrears were
remitted.
Mr & Mrs D
contacted TOP about a tax point. On investigation, it was found they
had been overpaying tax for years - he was a 10% taxpayer and she was a
non-taxpayer. £5000 tax was recovered.
Mr M propped up his pension with some bits of
self-employment. He came for
help with his self assessment form which he found confusing. The TOP adviser helped him
complete it and told him to come back next year if he still had
problems. Mr & Mrs N both had some overseas pension and
therefore had to complete tax returns. Unfortunately Mr N suffered from
Alzheimer’s and could no longer complete or sign his return. TOP arranged with the tax office
for a return signed and submitted by Mrs N on his behalf to be
accepted. Mr O thought he was paying rather a lot of tax. TOP discovered that not merely was
he paying Basic Rate on one pension but also had it included as a
restriction on his coding.
TOP had the coding corrected and repayment secured of three years
overpayments. Mrs P, a widow, received a demand for £3500
underpayment. IR had not been
collecting tax on her State Pension.
Investigation revealed that she had not been sent the form P161 on
retiring at 60 and TOP claimed official error and secured remission of the
underpayment. Mrs Q became a taxpayer for the first time in her life
at the age of 91 when her second husband died. The assorted fragments of pensions
dragged her into the 10% band and she needed some guidance on what she
should do. Mr R moved into a smaller flat and had a little spare
capital left over in a savings account. He wanted help to work out if he
could sign R85 to have the interest paid without deduction of
tax. Mrs S, 79, with inoperable cancer was pursued by the
Revenue for failing to provide tax returns which they had been sending to
an address she left 9 years previously. They demanded £1200 in arrears
with penalties and interest.
Mr S could not help – he was in a nursing home with
Alzheimer’s. The TOP adviser
tackled the Revenue and showed that not only did Mrs S not have a tax
liability at all, her allowances exceeding her income, but that in fact
she was owed a refund. IR
apologised and made a consolatory payment. Mr T was being pursued by the Revenue for a £2000
underpayment. The TOP adviser
demonstrated that in fact the Revenue owed him £1400. The adviser further pointed out to
Mr T’s local authority that they had wrongly calculated his Housing
Benefit based on pre-tax rather than post-tax
income. Mrs V, a
widow existing on Pension Credit, was assessed for a tax debt of £24,000
and threatened with distraint.
The TOP adviser reduced this to the actual debt of £247 and got
everything sorted. Mrs W went for an eye test at the suggestion of the TOP
adviser who then arranged for her to receive the Blind Persons Allowance
when she came back registered blind.
He then guided her towards Age Concern who succeeded in claiming
Pension Credit for her. Mrs Y, recently widowed, was assessed as having a tax
liability. The adviser
realised that the Revenue had failed to allocate to her the balance of her
late husband’s Married Couples Allowance which should continue to the end
of the year and which wiped out the tax due. Mrs Z received a demand for £1500 arrears of tax. Investigation by the TOP adviser revealed that not merely had HMRC failed to code out her State pension in some years but also the employer had failed to operate the codes given, while HMRC had noticed nothing odd for 6 years. The arrears were remitted.
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