NZBee

the stupid tax man thinks I owe him money in the UK from when I left my job there. What would happen if I didnt pay this. Does anyone actually know??

TeamEmbo

No, sorry. But I know we've had problems with all sorts. We left thinking we had informed everyone and had paid off all bills. Child benefit continued payments, as did working tax credit, despite being told numerous times we'd left the country. My credit card still seemed to think I owed the whole balance despite sending copies of bank statement to show payment made and a copy of c/card statement showing zero. Same with BT, threatening to cut us off. And it is really frustrating as at the time we didn't know how to call UK 0800 numbers (still not sure if you can) and sending letters wasn't very effective as it took so long and crossed others from them somewhere across the Pacific. We are still having to remind working tax credit we are no entitled to anything and yet they are still sending half a rainforest on a regular basis with a new calculation!!

lardyl

me too - they claim they sent a tax return last year, it was not redirected, then they hit me with £100 penalty and refuse to let me fill in the short form rebate claims for the previous two years where they owe me £1000s.....literaly.....now I've got no time to sit down with the mointain of paperwork and sort it out myself.....bad enough keeping up with the GST, FBT, etc, etc here.......

Hot tip, fill in the "I'm leaving the country Mr Taxman" form before you go - problem for us was that I was self-employed (although I never got paid for the work when in UK) and could not finalise my affiars before we left - and a IFA we engaged 3 months before we left failed to do the necessary paperwork and so we were left high and dry and had to sort out that side of finances before the tax side.....ooops :curse:

squeekybobo

If you account at HMRC showed outstanding tax then you'd incur:

- Penalties (applied at 31st Jan and 31 July) if tax outstanding at that point
- Surcharges (applied at 28th Feb and 31st July) of 5% of outstanding tax
- Associated interest.

Depending on your circumstances, some people are actually due refunds if they leave part way through a tax year (especially if leaving early in the tax year) as they haven't recieved the benefit of the full personal allowance and lower rate bands through PAYE (as applied 1/12 each month).

Fill out Form P85 to notify the Revenue of your departure:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/p85.pdf

On the last section you can either ask them for a refund straight away, or cross that section through and file a tax return (which is usually more accurate and not too hard as online filing is the norm now).

I don't know if the revenue would come after you in NZ if an amount was outstanding, but it would probably cause a few issues if you decided to return to the UK!!!

Hope that helps!

nomadicmike

Dont burn your bridges with the UK!

NZBee

Thanks! This really helps.
I did fill out the P85 form ages ago, and I left the UK in August, which was the beginning of a tax year really (4 months) so still do not understand why the are saying I owe money. My employer in the UK threw the toys out of the pram when I resigned and didnt send me my P whatever it is to me when I left. Maybe that is causing the problems. To be fair, I left the UK nearly a year ago, and thought I had tied up everything as I should.
Clearly not :curse:

NZBee

I wont. The UK is burning its bridges with me.

squeekybobo

Well, if you only have mainly employment income then I recommend running your income figure off your P60 for the year that you left through a cool website (I'm not connected to it in any way!) and see if the PAYE figure on the P60 is more or less than the estimate on the website:

http://www.listentotaxman.com/

If you have a load of bank interest, rental income, dividend shares etc then this could be the reason why HMRC thinks you owe them....