You may be wondering when you might receive a response from HMRC in respect of post, which now may be more than 12 months old. Various professional bodies have continued to press HMRC on their service performance, which includes long helpline waiting times and delays in handling written correspondence.
In order to try and respond to some of these problems, HMRC are trialling a Taskforce which started operating on 10 July 2023 with their remit to process post over 12 months old. The aim is to significantly reduce the number of very old, outstanding cases over the next few months.
As taxation agents, we are able to request online so that the processing of post now more than 12 months old can be escalated.
There will be an online form which we, as tax agents, can use and this will get a response from HMRC. In the first instance the agents will receive an automatic response acknowledging receipt and then HMRC will contact the agent within 5 working days to confirm that the reported post has been identified and that they will respond more fully within 15 working days.
However, HMRC has stressed that this process cannot be used in respect of:
- Formal complaints unless there is associated post over 12 months old and which hasn’t been responded to.
- Appeals against HMRC decisions.
- Post under 12 months old.
- Cases where HMRC has already responded to an agent, eg: with a request for additional information.
- Where there are ongoing compliance checks unless there is associated post over 12 months old without a response.
The intention from HMRC’s point of view is that they will monitor this trial and review how it is working in early August 2023.
In the meantime, if you do have any issues or cases where you have not received a response to correspondence with HMRC and which is now more than 12 months old, please do get in touch and we may be able to help either by advising on possibly the best way forward to deal with such situations or that we can get in touch with HMRC on your behalf to try and get the issue resolved. We should stress, however, that Nockolds Solicitors would need to be appointed as your agent and we would have to deal with this on a case-by-case basis.
If you would like to get in touch, please do not hesitate to call us on 01279 750677 or email to acoleman@nockolds.co.uk.