Gripe of the day - What is yours?

[embee]

Tell them it should be ten times as much.

[Swin]

Originally Posted by embee

Tell them it should be ten times as much.

And if they make it 10 times more, you'll share it with them 50-50

[Bibio]

before i start i regard Fife council as one of the best councils in Scotland if not the UK.

but... trying to get an appointment to see a customer representative is a fekin nightmare. they tell you to do everything online.. ok.. go to book an appointment at my local office only to have a prompt to sign up to mygov.scot... ermm no. so i phone up and wait 45min as everyone is doing the same.

get through and make an appointment without having to register to mygov.scot.. figure that out.

as far as their website is concerned all their local offices are open with opening times and no mention of having to book an appointment.... only found that out when i went round to the local office.

[svenrico]

Originally Posted by Seeker

HMRC Self Assessment tax form

...and I quote:

"Our records show that your 2020 to 2021 PAYE Notice of Coding includes an adjustment for tax underpaid.

Amount of estimated underpaid tax for 6 April 2020 to 5 April 2021 to be included in your PAYE tax code for 6 April 2021 to 5 April 2022 (from your PAYE Notice of Coding):
£ 0.00
Is this figure correct?"

I swear they put these things in to bamboozle you. It worked: I am bamboozled.

______________

Edit: so I phoned - 18 minutes of hold later I spoke to a nice Scottish lady. "Yes": she said, "It is supposed to be £0, it is confusing".

I have no words...

Whoever is responsible for this sort of wording on documents should be sacked. Have they no common sense ?!

[Bibio]

Originally Posted by Seeker

HMRC Self Assessment tax form

...and I quote:

"Our records show that your 2020 to 2021 PAYE Notice of Coding includes an adjustment for tax underpaid.

Amount of estimated underpaid tax for 6 April 2020 to 5 April 2021 to be included in your PAYE tax code for 6 April 2021 to 5 April 2022 (from your PAYE Notice of Coding):
£ 0.00
Is this figure correct?"

I swear they put these things in to bamboozle you. It worked: I am bamboozled.

______________

Edit: so I phoned - 18 minutes of hold later I spoke to a nice Scottish lady. "Yes": she said, "It is supposed to be £0, it is confusing".

I have no words...

looks to me like they are asking you if you have to pay tax as you are self employed. this will be part of the self assessment return. basically do you owe them tax....

i could be wrong... i usually am.

[Seeker]

Originally Posted by Bibio

looks to me like they are asking you if you have to pay tax as you are self employed. this will be part of the self assessment return. basically do you owe them tax....

i could be wrong... i usually am.

I'm retired. I suspect the problem lies with a small annuity that just started, my birthday is one day before the end of the tax year - HMRC sent me a new tax code of 48T (the annuity is for £480) and dropped my previous 1250L to a 1201L. The "T" suffix means the tax code won't change until they've reviewed it - there was no indication when that would be or the implications of any change.
I just included the annuity as income and paid the taxes due. There was further confusion (for me) because my April USA Social security was late - it arrived on the 6th April instead of the 3rd but I included it in last year's tax year.
What became clear on my second call to HMRC (hold time 25 mins) is that the people manning the phones aren't well versed in our tax system either.

It costs $36000/hr to fly an F35 (says Lockheed) so my tax due has paid for about 2.3 minutes of flight time, not sure if that includes a pilot.

[maviczap]

Originally Posted by Seeker

What became clear on my second call to HMRC (hold time 25 mins) is that the people manning the phones aren't well versed in our tax system either.

Unfortunately, they're in a call centre, following a script or flow chart.

If it doesn't compute, they don't know, they aren't trained Tax Officers. In the olden days, you could visit your local tax office, whether it was Income or VAT.

But some bright spark thought it better to centralise everything and put it online.

[Chris_SVS]

Collected my new car this morning, within 20mins it was nearly written off 3 times, not by my doing..

[garynortheast]

Bloody hell Chris! You'll be lucky to make it through the week without it being trashed at that rate!

[Chris_SVS]

I used much more colourful language than that..