SDLT Mitigation schemes.......buy cheap, buy twice!

[dave_s13]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

How woiuld you go about doing that though. how do you know who insures them, how do put an application in for compensation?

[plasticpig]

dave_s13 said:

Sorry to hear you are also having trouble.

The only thing I know for sure is that we will have to pay the SDLT to the HMRC. Whether we then get stung with penalties, interest is not yet known. Also there is a question around whether or not we can claim any of our losses back.

Mate of mine was caught up in this fraud he claimed back the money from the SRA compensation fund

[Mr GrimNasty]

dave_s13 said:

So,

It looks like I have a completion statement that shows I paid Arc the full amount of SDLT.

There is nothing in there to say they implemented the planning scheme...ie I'm £1550 down and have to pay it again.

It effectively it looks like I have paid them the full amount and they have fraudulently filled in the SDLT to show £0 is owed....then pocketed the £1550.

Surely you know how much you paid to the conveyancer and what it was (supposed to be) for? If you were told to pay in full but to expect a refund, why didn't you query its non-appearance. You indicate you don't have a lot of spare cash - how could you lose track of £hundreds?

[ShortShift811]

dave_s13 said:

How woiuld you go about doing that though. how do you know who insures them, how do put an application in for compensation?

Check out my post back in December 2013 on Page 1 of this thread OP.

You need to speak with and check out the websites of the Legal Ombudsman, SRA (Solicitors' Regulation Authority) and The Law Society - all have lots of info on Professional Indemnity Insurance and the process involved in lodging a complaint and making a claim.

[dave_s13]

Mr GrimNasty said:

Surely you know how much you paid to the conveyancer and what it was (supposed to be) for? If you were told to pay in full but to expect a refund, why didn't you query its non-appearance. You indicate you don't have a lot of spare cash - how could you lose track of £hundreds?

I didn't have 3 kids and a wife only just back on maternity back then....don't get me wrong, I'm not destitute. I just don't have thousands knocking about as back up.

I'm still in the process of trying to track down what was paid, in which direction, and to whom. My plan of action is to 1st write to the HMRC explaining what has happened, await their response, then try and claim through the SRA. I'll look at the other avenues posted too re the law society and what not. All the while my intention is to drip feed payments back to HMRC every month to get it paid down.

I made a mistake by trusting someone to deliver the deliverable. If I can mitigate my losses to a degree then that's a bonus, You live and learn!!

I just hope Rajob Ali is pleased with himself.
http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/harrogate_ripon/10...

Edited by dave_s13 on Wednesday 7th May 20:23

[dave_s13]

ShortShift811 said:

Commiserations OP; not a nice position to find yourself in.

I would echo the advice of getting all your paperwork in order and having a robust response ready, including all mitigating circumstances and details of how the avoidance scheme was 'sold' to you.

You might find it useful to know that solicitors carry Professional Indemnity Insurance (for claims against them due to negligence) for this very reason. Even after they have closed down, the SRA insists they carry run-off PII for a period of 6 years, and the insurer is obliged to provide this even if the firm in question hasn't paid the premium.

There are specific pages explaining the insurance a Solicitors has to carry on both the SRA and Law Society websites.

It looks like a claim against the firm's PII might be your only recompense, even if you have to settle the HMRC bill in the first instance.

Usual caveat applies; I am not a lawyer etc. (I work in a related area and have seen similar circumstances before).

Hope you get the best possible resolution.

Thank you

[Db36]

Sorry to hear you are also having trouble.

The only thing I know for sure is that we will have to pay the SDLT to the HMRC. Whether we then get stung with penalties, interest is not yet known. Also there is a question around whether or not we can claim any of our losses back.


So are you paying it or appealing? What did stevensons say to you? Sorry so many questions. Guess I will be calling stevensons tomorrow to find out what to do. The penalty could be 1.5k plus interest and no idea how they work out interest.

[dave_s13]

Db36 said:

Sorry to hear you are also having trouble.

The only thing I know for sure is that we will have to pay the SDLT to the HMRC. Whether we then get stung with penalties, interest is not yet known. Also there is a question around whether or not we can claim any of our losses back.


So are you paying it or appealing? What did stevensons say to you? Sorry so many questions. Guess I will be calling stevensons tomorrow to find out what to do. The penalty could be 1.5k plus interest and no idea how they work out interest.

Stevensons were little more than useless. Essentially she told me that the course of action they would take is to present my case to HMRC with hoping they would waive any due payments, no guarantee this would work. For this they wanted to charge £500. I told them I would think about it.

The general consensus on here is that the above strategy is total bks, there is no way HMRC will just write this off. You/We are liable and you need to pay it off. I spoke to the repayment dept at HMRC to explain that I wasn't in a position to pay it all off in one go and to ask what my options were. The chap explained there was no facility to set up a repayment plan as such but his advice was to pay off regular amounts at regular intervals and this would be taken as a positive action by the recovery dept who may see it is being paid down and take no further action.

with regard to interest accrued and penalties: I spoke to the officer who sent my letter and he indicated that penalties may be waived based on assessment of the circumstance, he wouldn't comment on the interest. I believe interest is 3% apr so it's not astronomical fortunately. The stage I'm at now is I've drafted a letter to HMRC explaining the situation and stressing that we acted in good faith etc. Included all invoices/emails/completion statements relating to the transactions (thank the lord baby jesus I archived these in my works email) and the plan is to wait for their response. Next step is to claim back any losses via SRA, you can download a claim form from their website.

Unlucky anyway mate. If you find out anything useful then please let me know, same applies your way, I'll help you out if I can. PM me if you like.

[dave_s13]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Good point.

I'm hopeful that penalties will be waived in this circumstance.

[Db36]

Is the letter that you have done to HMRC to help get the penalty waived? I will speak to them tomorrow and see what they say. They must be getting lots of calls about this.

[dave_s13]

Db36 said:

Is the letter that you have done to HMRC to help get the penalty waived? I will speak to them tomorrow and see what they say. They must be getting lots of calls about this.

The letter I got explaining we owed them cash has a section about them wanting to know how this came about.

After speaking to the chap that sent the letter he seemed keen for me to write in to explain everything from my side, with supporting evidence. Part of this includes asking them to waive any penalties.

It looks like the penalty is a fixed £200 + 3% apr on the amount owed. It's not a huge amount but still a kick in the nuts.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/sdlt/return/deadlines.htm#2

I would suggest you get your paperwork and facts straight then ring the number on your letter, explain what happened and then see what they say.

ps..I'm turning the laptop off and going to watch Game of Thrones + massive glass of wine to mitigate the pain, might not reply back tonight......all the best.

Edited by dave_s13 on Wednesday 7th May 20:56

[Bigbox]

Might be irrelevant but if you're paying for legal cover on your home insurance it may be worth giving them a bell

[Dave_ST220]

I remember looking at these schemes when I purchased my last place. In fact I'm sure I posted on here! Being honest it took me 10 minutes to realise they were talking st and I'd have to pay full sdlt. I think the best you can hope for is pay everything owed without penalties. Good luck.

Ot sdlt sucks and takes a massive chunk of any house move budget. The price brackets are a joke. No wonder people look at any way possible to avoid it.

[robulation]

Wow... well I am yet another victim that seems to be stuck with an SDLT payment of nearly 3k (including 4 years worth of charges and interest from HMRC)...

Anyway, without further ado, I'll tell you my story, and then all the progress I've made so far.

I bought a house and instructed our solicitors to do everything... They were a nightmare, and in the end we were glad to have got everything finished to be honest. 3 months after our purchase we had a letter from HMRC saying that we need to pay SDLT. I contacted the solicitors and they emailed me saying that "we're really sorry, all the errors have now been sorted". I felt obliged to contact HMRC who then said that the solicitors had told them that we were first time buyers and therefore exempt from SDLT (which they KNEW that we weren't!). I contacted our solicitors again, and they said "everything has now been processed... It had slipped through the net and not to worry". Foolishly, I thought everything had finally been sorted.

Until about 6 months ago!

4 years on and I've only recently started receiving stinking letters from HMRC together with a business card of an HMRC debt collector threatening to come round to seize items in my house to the value of the owed amount. It's all happened really bloody suddenly considering I was never told at any point in between!

Oh yeah, to make matters worse, the solicitors went into liquidation 2 years ago... for withholding SDLT payments.

So, it's looking very much like I'm going to have to pay twice.


Anyway, here's what I've done so far...

• I have been in touch with the intervention solicitors who dealt with the winding down of the company
• They told me that I had to write a letter to the SRA to retrieve all the files that they held in their archives (which I've got)
• I have had to contact HMRC every 2 weeks to prevent them going any further with debt collection (I went on holiday last week, and they've sent me yet another stinky letter)
• After not getting anywhere with HMRC again, with one guy at the call centre even saying that it's not uncommon for payments to go missing (great)
• The SRA said that in order to be compensated, I need to write a letter to the Birmingham Stamp Office detailing everything, then HMRC need to run a search of any payments and prove beyond any reasonable doubt that a payment wasn't made
• All the way through this I have refused to pay the 3k again, hoping that HMRC will wait for the SRA to pay the compensation direct to them

And that's as far as I've got and the process that I've had to go through. I've got to call HMRC tomorrow as they left me a voicemail whilst on holiday, so hopefully they'll have some feedback from the letter that I've sent them.

Any feedback, advice or thoughts would be appreciated... is there anyone else out there who as ever actually been compensated by the SRA?

Cheers,
Robulation

[pork911]

It's unclear from your post whether you paid all or part of it to your solicitors and whether any form of 'mitigation scheme' was involved?

[dave_s13]

Indeed, your circumstances sound entirely different to mine.

I'm still waiting for hmrc to reply to my letter detailing my case and to clarify exactly what we owe. Then I can try to claim this back from the firm's pi insurance or sra scheme.

[robulation]

Just so you know, I had paid my solicitors the full amount of SDLT. It's just they never paid it, and then they got struck off the list and closed down.
That's where the differences end though really. The process is still fundamentally the same.

I'm in the process of building a claim so that the SRA can compensate me. But I would be interested to know how you get on too, so I will keep checking back!

Cheers,
Robulation

[dave_s13]

robulation said:

Just so you know, I had paid my solicitors the full amount of SDLT. It's just they never paid it, and then they got struck off the list and closed down.
That's where the differences end though really. The process is still fundamentally the same.

I'm in the process of building a claim so that the SRA can compensate me. But I would be interested to know how you get on too, so I will keep checking back!

Cheers,
Robulation

Yeah, I suppose there are some fundamental similarities.

I've just had an email from the firms PI insurer to confirm my recent contact, they are suggesting we should pursue our claim via the SRA in the first instance. Also the SRA said I should consider putting in a parralell claim to them also so I'm going to complete one of their application forms shortly.

Also had email confirmation back from HMRC stating I should have a written reply within 10 working days as to their position. Hopefully this will give me a total loss figure I can claim against.

[Jobbo]

DaveS13, sorry to get your hopes up by bringing your thread back up but I haven't got anything new for you. I have, however, seen a story today about the chap who ran Abode (aka Arc) simply lying on the SDLT return for his own house purchase: http://www.rollonfriday.com/TheNews/EuropeNews/tab...

Might be a little schadenfreude for you, at least.

[dave_s13]

Jobbo said:

DaveS13, sorry to get your hopes up by bringing your thread back up but I haven't got anything new for you. I have, however, seen a story today about the chap who ran Abode (aka Arc) simply lying on the SDLT return for his own house purchase: http://www.rollonfriday.com/TheNews/EuropeNews/tab...

Might be a little schadenfreude for you, at least.

LOL cheers

It's still on going. Claim is in with the SRA, taking ages to hear anything back.

Had quite a few people contact me via PM about this atually. Obviously they are googling the issue and PH is coming up top. The power of the interweb!