Many taxpayers need to make a payment on account for 2018/19 alongside any balancing amount of tax due for 2017/18. This POA should be detailed on your statement of account, once the 2017/18 return is filed, but in some cases it’s missing.
This problem applies to your online account as well as to paper statements of account. In some cases, the CGT payment due on 31 January is also missing.
HMRC recognise this is an issue, but they say it only affects a small number of taxpayers for their 2017/18 tax returns. However, judging by the number of queries on the HMRC agent forum, this is a widespread problem.
We therefore advise clients to pay the correct amount of tax due, and not to pay the lower figure as shown on the incorrect statement. HMRC has said that no one will be charged additional interest because of this problem, but don’t count on the HMRC computer getting that right as well.
If your tax statement is wrong we contact HMRC, and they should be able to correct the PAO manually.
Incidentally this problem also arose for some 2016/17 tax returns where the POA due on 31 July 2018 went missing (see our newsletter on 19 July 2018).
Written by the Tax Advice Network