I gave up being self employed almost 3 years ago. The transition to PAYE was a painful one with many mistakes. OK some were made by me, but mainly, HMRC.

For technical reasons, three months ago I had to contact a specialist area of HMRC. They were fantastic & sorted out the mess within days by using some clever tricks to get around the (their own) system. For instance, they repaid a large rebate to me in December (almost twice what I was owed), with a letter that they would have to claim by almost 50% of it in February - which they have done. God knows why they had to do it this way, but it worked.

It seems to me that HMRC are a huge unwieldy supertanker full of red tape which isn't nimble enough to deal with quick thinking and evasive big businesses and far too clumsy when dealing with small fry like me

Maybe they should PFI the tax office as that always makes Govt departments more efficent doesn't it? (not ) Perhaps G4S (Revenue) PLC ????

As a self employed person they gauge my earnings from the previous year and the tax paid on it and demand 50% of what they think my tax bill will be up front by the end of July.

If I don't earn enough to justify the figure already taken it is like pulling hens teeth trying to get it back.

I got a new tax code today with a message saying "We know you are currently between jobs"

??????

I've retired, I'm not between jobs for goodness sake. They're hopeless!

I'm shocked by all this. I get an accountant to do my tax returns. Most years I've been due a rebate amd a cheque comes from HMRC within a week.

It's funny you wrote that.

I had a letter from them last week, sent to me in North America, saying " we know you have two jobs" your total wage is under the tax bracket"?

I'm retired, and have not worked in the UK for almost 20years.

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Posts often deleted................Why? I don't know.

Jon, I'm led to beleive that 'accountants' have a special hotline/relationship with the tax-man.

Income tax problems become a major headache once you retire. HMRC give every indication of taking a particular sadistic pleasure in hounding pensioners. Possibly because HMRC, and their political masters, view pensioners as mentally deficient has-beens who have more money than they've a right to.

Last week I too received a new tax code, to be effective from April 2013. As per usual EVERY YEAR, the new tax code is WRONG AGAIN. The annual procedure will now commence with me writing letters explaining HMRC's errors - HMRC sending me a Self Assessment form to complete - followed by a statement from HMRC telling me I owe them money for the tax year 2012/2013 - followed by endless letters from me proving I don't owe them anything - they owe me - and if I'm fortunate I may get my money back by Christmas 2013 (considerably devalued in the mean time by the deceitful hyper-inflation we are all experiencing.

The impact of QE on inflation really needs to be hammered home by the media - and its real purpose.

What a nightmare Westonman! I absolutely HATE form filling, and one of the reasons I look forward to one day retiring is the thought of not having to worry about that sort of thing.... looks like I've got that one totally wrong then doesn't it!!!

Re the real purpose of QE Geezer, remind us.

Sorry Jon, the prospects are not good. Currently as a pensioner, if you have more income sources than the basic State Pension, or/and you have any reserves in savings etc. then HMRC want to know about every penny you have and try to take it from you. If you have savings, then HMRC will ASSUME you are receiving an interest rate of 10% and tax code you accordingly – even though interest rates on savings haven't been anywhere near 10% for about 30 years.

Letters from HMRC invariably come with menacing threats of fines/ high interest rates on 'unpaid' income tax, etc. In my experience, the tone of HMRC's letters generally assume the taxpaying pensioner is guilty of unpaid tax, who then has to prove his/her innocence. For pensioners who are less than robust, I can imagine that letters from HMRC can be very frightening. For pensioners who don't have the ability to verify HMRC's tax codes themselves, then paying for an accountant/tax advisor becomes a forced and unnecessary expense.

After my father died I discovered that he was paying for a tax advisor/accountant, even though his total income consisted of the basic State Pension and one very tiny private pension, where his total income didn't even come close to exceeding the tax threshold for his circumstances.

I truly believe that officialdom views pensioners as an easy source of illegal tax income.

When George Osborne announced that he was freezing the Age Tax Allowance for pensioners I wrote to my local MP, who passed my letters to David Gauke MP at the Treasury. Gauke replied to me via my MP, this resulted our exchanging letters via my MP. Gauke came across as a very unpleasant individual indeed, one who clearly has little regard for pensioners – I suspect, even holding them in contempt. About that time, the freezing of the Age Allowance was debated in the Commons and televised live. During that debate Gauke manifested the same unpleasantness towards pensioners that I had seen in his letters. The man clearly has no appreciation of the additional costs that many pensioners have to bear, expecaily if they have any kind of health/disabilty issue that results in expenditure that non-pensioners don't have to meet.

A lot of fuss is created by the political elite about free buss passes for pensioners. The truth is, many of we pensioners are unable to use a bus, even if we wanted to - I am one of those . The Age Allowance was one method of recognising the additional costs pensioners have to meet - sadly, Mr Gauke, along with many other members of this sad Coalition, are unable/unwilling to recognise essential expenditure costs for pensioners.

This is Gauke: http://www.davidgauke.com/