Advice needed on Tax rebate!

[Hullfan]

I was self employed in 2008 but only worked about a month doin it. I never let hmrc know tht id stopped working as self employed. So they said im owed some money cant say how much until its all been calculated and they are closing my self employment down or somet.! So will they av presumed im working self employed and PAYE????

[ckn]

A few points.  First up though, I'm not giving you formal advice here, just a few suggestions, you need to get proper advice, especially if HMRC are on a fishing expedition.

 

1. PAYE and what you pay as a self-employed person are treated as the same thing at the end of the year by HMRC.  Your annual tax return will amalgamate this into a single tax-due figure.  It's highly unlikely you over-paid tax if you're filling in tax returns properly.  If you haven't been filling in tax returns then it's unlikely HMRC have been treating you as self-employed.

2. "owed some money" coming from HMRC sounds like they want you to open up about everything, bank accounts, the lot to see if you've UNDERPAID tax.  If you paid your self-employed takings into a personal bank account and never closed down your self-employed account with HMRC then everything to do with that personal account is fair game for them to review.  You'd better be squeaky clean.

3.  Was it definitely HMRC who told you this or was it a third party?  Make sure you're definitely talking to HMRC as there's a lot of scammers out there pretending to be them to get access to your accounts or to charge you a "fee" for representing you.  To make sure, go to the HMRC website and get the correct contact details for the department who contacted you and use those to check.