zmartin

We left the UK end of November 07 so I filled in the P85 form along with the tax man's part of my P45 saying I'm emigrating and therefore leaving the UK so give me my tax back.

Since then I have had several letters from them sent to my mils house saying there was a problem so I've phoned them on a couple of occasions. Firstly they said I didn't need to ring at all and then they said they had different information regarding my employment! I don't how they could have as in the last financial year and the present one I have only had one employer - in fact I'd had the same employer since 1998!!!

Now my mil has had a letter saying it looks like I'm currently in between jobs so they've changed my tax code!!! Are they just stupid???

I can only ring between 8am and 5pm so will have to ring in the morning but what can I say to them to sort this all out properly as they obviously aren't listening to me? Maybe the Government is in such dire straits that they can't afford to return tax to all the people fleeing the country!!!!!

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Zoe M. x

johanne302

Hi there

We had exactly the same thing happen to us.

What you need to do is send a letter to your local tax office stating you have received a New Tax Code instead of a N/C code as you are no longer resident in the UK.

Request a letter from them stating your N/C Code. You should also change your address to one in Canada and not use your mil's - for some reason still having a postal address in the UK confuses them.

Hope this helps.

Iain Mc

I got a letter confirming my change of tax code to unemployed or some such, which is I suppose correct in terms of my UK income, which is now effectively zero. So it's maybe not so stupid; however they did this AFTER they'd paid me my refund from the last tax year, so I wasn't too bothered what they did!

And I was corresponding with them from a Canadian address - the refund was actually quite prompt (for the revenue), I think under six weeks after I sent them the P85.

ann m

I am belatedly completing and sending in my P85. Where is my 'local Tax Office' ? I printed the form off t'internet (and the website says I should have applied to my local office for the form).

Is the address mentioned on the bottom of my old payslip, ie, Edinburgh (even though I lived and worked in Surrey) my tax office ?

Can't seem to find a list of addresses regardless.

zmartin

I worked in the (Woking) North East Hampshire Tax Area - Fleet, Hants to be precise and I had to send my form off to Edinburgh so I guess that could be the right address for you too.

Zoe M. x

Flossie and Jim

You could try this list: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/practitioners/offices.xls I think its the one I looked up my tax office on and I got an acknowledgement from them so I must have been on the right lines. My tax office was Southampton on my old payslip so I started there. My payslip also had the tax office code which I could match on the list so that may be worth looking for too.

Hope this helps
Flossie

expatadvisor

The P85 together with P45 must be submitted to your tax office together, and your tax office has no generally no relevance to where you live but is basically the tax office of your last UK employer. The situation is more complicated if one has pensions in payment etc when more than one tax office can be involved but one tax office generally overrides the rest.

No one should be suprised at the inability of the HMRC to communicate effectively, for they even managed to lose 7 years of my tax records and I am a tax advisor based in the UK and deal with them on a daily basis for my clients. An important point with the revenue if you wish to "get out of the system" quickly is to give them your new overseas address for all correspondence as this will lead to closure of your tax file once the P85 form and potential rebate has been dealt with.

Paul Wildy

All this sounds completely unsuprising. We sent of P85s and they just completely ignored them - keep writing to us as though we never left. We werent claiming a refund so I cant say that I'm too bothered about it. I guess eventually they will figure it out!

zmartin

Well I sent a letter off to the UK taxman and today my refund has gone into my account - finally!!! Just to need to find out about my husband's now! Thanks for all your replies.

Zoe M. x

jericho

How would a rebate work?
Im expecting to receive a large bonus in March, for the period 01/01/07-31/12/07.
I received a similar bonus last March, and was taxed approx £12k.

Assuming I receive a similar bonus this year (and taxed a similar amount), can I expect to get much of that back? We're hoping to move over in around 6 months (ish), subject to LMO.