SOME SEASONAL SILLINESS

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SOME SEASONAL SILLINESS

 

I received an odd e-mail on 5 April from someone calling themselves PAYE.com with expensive offices in The Shard.  It started, “As a tax consultant for CBW you may be aware of that IR35 that will have significant implications on your take-home pay if working as a contractor.  IR35 is effective from the 6 April 2021 but it is not too late to find a solution or a replacement one before the deadline.  The good news is there is still time to protect your take-home and achieve a potential 75% of your contract value”.  It goes on to tell me that it uses “Zero Tax Avoidance”.

Leaving aside the atrocious English, I was not aware that IR35 will have significant implications for me as I do not have a personal service company and am not within the scope of IR35.  I was also not aware that IR35 is effective from 6 April 2021; I am under the impression that it has been effective even since 6 April 2000 (the hint is in the name; IR35 was the number of the 1999 Budget Note that announced it).  I am pleased to learn that a person can obtain 75% of his contract value with Nil tax avoidance, albeit I assume the 25% deduction is 20% income tax and a 5% fee for PAYE.com, i.e. that although there is nil tax avoidance, there is 100% NIC avoidance.

I tried to find PAYE.com on the internet.  Bing could not find it through Microsoft Edge. Although it could do so via old-fashioned Internet Explorer, it refused me access to the site telling me it was dangerous to go there.

So anxious was this company to help me that it sent me follow-up e-mails on 6 and 7 April to try to ensure that I did not miss out on this “opportunity”!

I was chatting to Tom, CBW’s senior tax partner, recently when he grinned and held out his phone so I could hear.  Apparently if he did not give his credit card details to HMRC, they were going to issue a warrant for his arrest.  These scammers ought to be more careful about who they try to scam!

I recently read an HMRC Guidance Note on “Bulk filing of Self Assessment Appeals for multiple clients”.  This tells me that HMRC are issuing late filing penalties for anyone unable to file their 2019/20 self-assessment return by 28 February 2021, but they will accept coronavirus as a reasonable excuse for any appeal made against the penalties.  As they expect thousands of appeals, they are setting up a system for Bulk Agent appeals.  (Yes, I know that raising assessments and expecting people to appeal against them might be regarded by some as pointless, but this is HMRC).  I thought that I would share the procedure with readers: 

1.      Download a template from the HMRC website.

2.      Print it out.

3.      Fill it in.

4.      Post it to a special HMRC “Bulk Agent” Appeals address.

HMRC go on to warn that the template can only be used for 25 or fewer clients.  If an agent wants to appeal for more, he must use a second template.  However, he must not include two templates in the same envelope.  If he completes more than one template, they each need to go into separate envelopes.  No “save paper to reduce the country’s carbon footplate” for HMRC.  The attitude seems to be, the more paper we can generate, the more we thwart the government! Who cares about releasing unnecessary carbon into the atmosphere.  That’s not HMRC’s problem!

 

ROBERT MAAS