Christopher’s tax affairs really ought to be straight forward. There is no inheritance tax to pay, as he left almost everything to me. If anything, he should be due a small income tax rebate for this current tax year – the pittance of interest earned on his savings was well below the tax threshold, but he didn’t get around to registering for nil-rate tax so overpaid slightly. There is a fairly simple form (by HMRC standards at least) called an R27 which I sent off to them over a month ago to calculate the rebate due.
However, the big bogey in the corner is his redundancy payment from this time last year. Although, according to HMRC rules, some of that was tax free, I strongly suspect that there is tax still owing on the rest. To complicate matters, he put some of the cash straight into his pension as an “Additional Voluntary Contribution”, which should attract tax relief at the highest rate. With hindsight, of course, he wouldn’t have done that as he didn’t live long enough to see any benefit from it. Indeed, I’m still in discussion with the pension fund trustees about what they’re going to do about the AVC – the subject for a future blog post I suspect.
By the end of the tax year, in April, when he should really have sorted all this out, he was in the midst of chemotherapy so we had other priorities. So the upshot is that I’ve had to get all the figures together about his redundancy payment and pension contributions and send off various documents to the HMRC “customer operations centre”. Thank goodness he’d filed them in a sensible place, as it all dates from this time last year, before we knew he was ill and I had no part in dealing with it. At least the taxman has agreed to do all the sums for me – though I will of course check them before I agree to pay anything! And they don’t seem to be in any grand hurry – it’s nearly three months since I first contacted them and they’ve only just written to ask me to supply more details. At that speed, I reckon I needn’t waste a first-class stamp when I reply to them…….
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“However, the big bogey in the corner is his redundancy payment from this time last year. Although, according to HMRC rules, some of that was tax free, I strongly suspect that there is tax still owing on the rest”
If you want to know the long running saga of mine email and i’ll let you know. If IR was a private company they’d be bankrupt by now.
Wife also made over 30 attempts to contact them one day !
Dear Gillian,
I’m tempted to quote from a Beatles song about taxation, but fear that would be considered a) libellous, b) demonstrate knowledge of popular beat culture, c) risk the wrath of J.
I’ve always approved of 2nd class stamps.
All the best,
R&F&M