Working Together 35

Issue 35 of HMRC’s Working Together bulletin has recently been published. Extracts follow.

Delayed payments

HMRC have acknowledged that many taxpayers have been experiencing ‘substantial’ delays in receiving self assessment repayments and that documentation indicating that a repayment has been made has confused the position.

The department says that ‘the delays have been caused by a combination of a very much sharper peak of repayments in January and February arising from the move to greater online filing and more repayments being selected for our security checking processes’.

HMRC explain that they use ‘an automated risk-based process to identify which repayments can be immediately released and selects those which require further (manual) checks’.

They say that most repayments selected pass the check and are released for payment. The manual checks are causing the delays and HMRC say they are investigating how they can automate some of the checks...