HMRC tax code confusion after change of jobs/ own company

[stuartb3502]

I'm posting this in case it's of interest/help to others when searching rather than as a question.

I recently received new tax codes for 2017/18 and 2018/19. I was baffled by them. The 2017/18 one was normal, but the 2018/19 one showed a £0 allowance (0T I think). I went to my HMRC personal tax account to try and understand what was going on. There I found that my salary for this year was correctly shown after a recent company annual PAYE return (£8164). Also shown was "uncoded income" of ~£32K. I had no idea what this was.

I called the HMRC helpline and was somewhat (but not totally given this is HMRC) surprised by what I found out...

My background is that I had a previous ltd company which I wound up in 2013. I was then a normal employee at a company until Sept 2015 and then started another company (the current one) in March 2016. I had £0 income (bar bank interest and a little dividends) in the 2016/17 tax year and submitted a self-assessment return to that effect (I have been on self-assessment returns for many years).

HMRC were vague about what was going on at first, but after I pushed a bit and was passed on to someone else, it transpired that:

a) they had made an assumption that my income was going to be >£100K in 2018/19. This was based on my income from my job which ended in 2015 apparently. They did not seem to understand that I thought it unreasonable that they would assume that my income this year would be >£100K based on an employment I left 2+ years ago and for which they have seen P45s and subsequent tax returns.

b) they had recorded the ~£32k of uncoded income based on dividends I reported from 2013(!) when I had the previous company. This despite having submitted returns in all years since then showing dividends of ~£100s each year.

This all seems to have been triggered by me being registered as a new employee for PAYE at the new limited company and not coming straight from one employment to another.

There was no other information about what was going on in my personal tax account and it took 45 minutes on the phone with HMRC to get to the bottom of this. The person I eventually spoke with was at first the usual HMRC automaton who seem to regard taxpayers as there to serve HMRC. She opened with "it's your responsibility to check your tax code is correct". Eventually she did reveal that she still had some human DNA left and apologised about the mess.

As I say - posting in case anyone else comes searching trying to understand an odd tax code in similar circumstances.

[SteLacca]

You are by no means alone. I've had to speak to HMRC in respect of four different clients in the past week. I called the Agent Dedicated Line, which is supposed to be manned by experienced and knowledgeable staff, but frankly, the person that answered was as clueless as HMRC's computers seem to be.

Unfortunately, no-one in the department seems to be able to explain why wild and ridiculous assumptions are suddenly being made when coding 2018/19.

[robbob]

Unfortunately, no-one in the department seems to be able to explain why wild and ridiculous assumptions are suddenly being made when coding 2018/19.

hmm and we have the stories about random Alexa's switching lights off and on by themselves and laughing in a strange manner at their owners (if the daily mail is to be believed - that's probably a bit implausible in itself)

Is skynet up and running yet does anyone know?

[stuartb3502]

And there's the story about the ex-miners being sent incorrect tax demands for large amounts of back taxes.

Or the compliance check that was opened on me a while back where HMRC were looking at the wrong year. No apology forthcoming.
Or the time they sent me an incorrect demand for >£9K in overdue tax from an office with an out of service phone number. When contacted they could find no record of the letter, or why it had been sent.

<RANT ON> HMRC and it's excessively well-paid IT suppliers who are all meant to be the professionals dedicated to this stuff can make errors with impunity, but as taxpayers trying to fathom hugely overcomplicated tax rules, we're penalised if we make even small errors </RANT OFF>

Maybe the anarchists have a point