Three years in one

We act for a client who has a very low income and works part-time as a teaching assistant under PAYE.

Her only other income is £5 000 from property. Previous years’ tax returns have been submitted on a timely basis with requests for the underpayment of tax arising on the property income to be collected by a restriction in the following year’s notice of coding.

This applied for the underpayments for the years ended 5 April 2007 and 2008.

Unfortunately HMRC did not code out the underpayment neither did they issue us with a copy of the notice of coding.

The non-collection of these underpayments has come to light in the course of preparing the tax return for the year ended 5 April 2009.

We applied to HMRC to have the underpayment for 2006/07 set aside under extra-statutory concession A19 on the basis of their negligence to act...