I recently received a letter from the very nice tax people stating I owed them a substantial sum of money of unpaid tax from previous years.

What the f.... I'm a very low paid care worker, very happy with the job, but it's actually quite embarrassing what I earn these days. On the phone to the relevant department, I eventually get to talk to a live person who tells me that they've got me down, wait for it......a yearly salary of £103000... I whish.

Obviously I told the very nice person...WRONG! I've been assured things will be sorted out. Any other similar stories?

Had a similar one a few years ago. They weren't claiming I owed them anything but they were writing to tell me my tax code was changing due to my new six figure salary.

There was an errant zero on the end of my actual salary.

Luckily it was quickly resolved.

Yes, years ago in the early 80's I had 4 separate letters from the Inland Revenue landing on my door mat one day with a total tax demand of about £9000, one letter for each year.

Needless to say I went to their office to talk to them that day as I reckoned I was due a tax refund. The chap there was quite friendly and explained that I should have received 1 more that wanted about another £2k.

It turned out that they were trying to catch up on a period of self employment and my having been out of the country then starting employment back in the UK and this was their way of getting me to talk to them.

It certainly worked, and I also got my tax refund within a month.

I signed up the first year of self-assessment online. I missed the box that said how much tax is paid for that year so the system assumed none - so they sent me through a tax bill for that year and the current year amounting to tens of thousands.

When I contacted them I said that I'm sure they knew I'd paid PAYE and that I was up to date. They said that, yes, of course they knew that but it was in a different system.

I suggested that they make the "amount of UK tax paid" a mandatory field so you didn't miss it. I think that it now is.

My brother starting a part time business discovered he has to pay his tax bill plus a years tax for next year that he has not Earned yet!

When I moved house in 2010 I had a demand for stamp duty, I checked with the solicitor who confirmed it was paid so rang then they blamed the solicitor for issuing something twice but it was paid, so I asked for confirmation it was all paid and ok the response was "sorry we don't confirm in writing!"
I have not been chased since, so I guess it's ok now!

Your brother was probably paying himself dividends from his company. When you do this you have to pay a certain amount of tax up front for the following year. It's called "payment on account" and is pretty standard if you pay yourself income via dividends.

I moved to a new job in Italy a couple of years ago. The Italian tax people said my income for the year was €180,000 but sent me a tax bill for only €2000.

Not certain, but
He said he was told income above a certain amount think it was £10k you pay for the year ahead!

I used to have to do a self-assessment form. As my only income was from my PAYE employment it was really just a case of copying the numbers from my P60 onto the form and then posting it.

One year my form got lost. The tax office took quite a while to chase me for it then either I mis-wrote the tax paid section or the tax-office mis-typed it, but a zero got missed off the end.

The tax office therefore sent me a tax bill for £10,000.

I got in touch saying I didn't own them anything. They agreed and said they'd sort it.

That series of correspondence went on for years. Their advice to me (honestly) was that I should just pay them the 10 grand, then they'd sort out a refund for me!

Eventually they admitted that I didn't owe them anything, but said it was too late to edit my submission, so instead they credited my tax account with £10k, so that we'd be all square.

Good.

Then they started chasing me for the interest I'd accrued on the £10k that I'd never owed them. They kept adding interest and penalties all of this time.

At one point they sent debt collectors to my house. Fortunately they listened to sense and left empty-handed.

About 3 years ago, after getting my MP involved, the tax office admitted that I owed them nothing and resolved all of the outstanding interest and penalties on my account.

It took about 10 years to sort, though.

So, yeah, have fun.

Refunded me £1350 overpayment of tax, I queried it and sent it back..refunded it again....sent it back...my payments were correct. They sent it back again, I spent it. 2 months later, letter stating I had underpaid tax and a demand for £1350!!!!

AndrewR lay money on it that you never received an apology?

I took on a client who was being assessed for £400,000 in tax. With a bit of work I got it down to a more reasonable £40,000 His previous accountant was incompetent and so combined with HMRC who are also incompetent...