HMRC income tax refund - a mistake?
Discussion
TLDR: My HMRC account is telling me they owe me about £665, but I suspect they don’t. However, I’m not 100% sure either way. Should I go ahead and claim it anyway?
During tax year 24/25 I was working as an agency HGV driver, paid weekly and tax paid via PAYE in the usual way. In January 2025 I decided “sod that, I don’t wanna do this any more”, so I stopped. (Actually there were other personal reasons that I won’t bore you with.) I haven’t worked or earned any income since - I’m too young to draw on pensions, so I’m just dipping into my ISA.
Obviously, the way PAYE works is that it extrapolates your pay and charges you the appropriate amount of income tax on the assumption that you will earn a pro-rata amount until the end of the tax year. Stopping work in January therefore meant I’d paid too much income tax, and they did indeed owe me money. Somewhere north of £650, by my estimation.
When the tax year rolled over in April ‘25, my tax account told me “we haven’t calculated your tax yet, but don’t worry - you don’t need to do anything”. My patience ran out in October ‘25 because I knew they still owed me a substantial amount of money, so I decided to file a tax return to force the tax calculation to take place.
Doing this resulted in them owing me £692. Within a couple of days, the Self Assessment section of my tax account showed this refund, with a button to reclaim it. So I did, and waited. And waited. And waited.
By December I’d lost my patience again, so I phoned them. After a long and increasingly frustrating call, I had to get s
tty with them and threaten a formal complaint. And then magically a guy phoned me back the next morning saying he’d processed it and the cheque for £692 was in the post. It arrived a few days later, and I cashed it. Happy days!
The guy explained that ironically by filing a voluntary tax return I had in fact delayed the refund. And I think I may have muddled up their systems, because…
A few weeks later, my tax account started saying that they’d calculated my tax, and they now owe me £665. Looking at the calculation, it’s very similar to the numbers I put in my tax return (though I think they’ve counted bond fund income as “dividends”, whereas I declared it as “interest” - this might account for the discrepancy but I’m not sure).
However, crucially the calculation does not take into account the £692 they’ve already refunded me. If anything, I owe them about £27 if the £665 figure is correct. I suspect the Self Assessment part of HMRC hasn’t informed the PAYE part about the refund.
I’ve left it a few more weeks to see if their systems synchronise themselves, but it still thinks they owe me £665. Should I leave it a few more weeks beyond the Jan 31st deadline to see if anything changes?
Or should I just claim the refund anyway? I’m not certain they’ve cocked up; I merely suspect they might have. Would it be fraudulent to claim a refund that they’re offering, when it may or may not be a mistake?
I could, of course, phone them again. But my last interaction with them left me losing the will to live and then getting very stressed and angry. So I’d rather not.
If I don’t claim it, what do you think will happen in April? Will I lose the option to claim it, or will the refund carry over?
What would you do?
During tax year 24/25 I was working as an agency HGV driver, paid weekly and tax paid via PAYE in the usual way. In January 2025 I decided “sod that, I don’t wanna do this any more”, so I stopped. (Actually there were other personal reasons that I won’t bore you with.) I haven’t worked or earned any income since - I’m too young to draw on pensions, so I’m just dipping into my ISA.
Obviously, the way PAYE works is that it extrapolates your pay and charges you the appropriate amount of income tax on the assumption that you will earn a pro-rata amount until the end of the tax year. Stopping work in January therefore meant I’d paid too much income tax, and they did indeed owe me money. Somewhere north of £650, by my estimation.
When the tax year rolled over in April ‘25, my tax account told me “we haven’t calculated your tax yet, but don’t worry - you don’t need to do anything”. My patience ran out in October ‘25 because I knew they still owed me a substantial amount of money, so I decided to file a tax return to force the tax calculation to take place.
Doing this resulted in them owing me £692. Within a couple of days, the Self Assessment section of my tax account showed this refund, with a button to reclaim it. So I did, and waited. And waited. And waited.
By December I’d lost my patience again, so I phoned them. After a long and increasingly frustrating call, I had to get s
tty with them and threaten a formal complaint. And then magically a guy phoned me back the next morning saying he’d processed it and the cheque for £692 was in the post. It arrived a few days later, and I cashed it. Happy days!The guy explained that ironically by filing a voluntary tax return I had in fact delayed the refund. And I think I may have muddled up their systems, because…
A few weeks later, my tax account started saying that they’d calculated my tax, and they now owe me £665. Looking at the calculation, it’s very similar to the numbers I put in my tax return (though I think they’ve counted bond fund income as “dividends”, whereas I declared it as “interest” - this might account for the discrepancy but I’m not sure).
However, crucially the calculation does not take into account the £692 they’ve already refunded me. If anything, I owe them about £27 if the £665 figure is correct. I suspect the Self Assessment part of HMRC hasn’t informed the PAYE part about the refund.
I’ve left it a few more weeks to see if their systems synchronise themselves, but it still thinks they owe me £665. Should I leave it a few more weeks beyond the Jan 31st deadline to see if anything changes?
Or should I just claim the refund anyway? I’m not certain they’ve cocked up; I merely suspect they might have. Would it be fraudulent to claim a refund that they’re offering, when it may or may not be a mistake?
I could, of course, phone them again. But my last interaction with them left me losing the will to live and then getting very stressed and angry. So I’d rather not.
If I don’t claim it, what do you think will happen in April? Will I lose the option to claim it, or will the refund carry over?
What would you do?
I have the same issue.
I created a thread about a week or so ago.
Unfortunately for me PAYE / Simple Assessment are saying that I owe them for 2024 / 25.
I had already completed a Self Assessment and received a refund back in September 2025.
The catalyst for all this is the duality of both Self Assessment and Simple Assessment Departments calculating your tax for 2024 /25.
It is a little bit frightening that a department in HMRC can get simple arithmetic so wrong!
I have written a letter (registered post) and now have to wait for when they get round to it.
I created a thread about a week or so ago.
Unfortunately for me PAYE / Simple Assessment are saying that I owe them for 2024 / 25.
I had already completed a Self Assessment and received a refund back in September 2025.
The catalyst for all this is the duality of both Self Assessment and Simple Assessment Departments calculating your tax for 2024 /25.
It is a little bit frightening that a department in HMRC can get simple arithmetic so wrong!
I have written a letter (registered post) and now have to wait for when they get round to it.
I'd be inclined to claim it, purely on the basis that it will be quicker and easier to give it back to them in the future if a mistake is discovered than it will be to argue about it over the phone with them.
They'll be keener to sort things out if they think you have their money than if they have yours.
They'll be keener to sort things out if they think you have their money than if they have yours.
boyse7en said:
I'd be inclined to claim it, purely on the basis that it will be quicker and easier to give it back to them in the future if a mistake is discovered than it will be to argue about it over the phone with them.
They'll be keener to sort things out if they think you have their money than if they have yours.
In my mind that's the wrong thing to do.They'll be keener to sort things out if they think you have their money than if they have yours.
The first thing that HMRC do if they feel that they are owed money is to screw with your tax coding. That is a whole heap of pain!
Put in a letter. They then have to engage with you.
Whenever HMRC have said they owed me money I have claimed it, on the basis that they will make damn sure they let me know if I owe them, but if it's the other way round they will be rather more relaxed about it.
My tax code is a complete mess thanks to a useless administrator at one of my employments paying me somebody else's pay for about 6 months, across a tax year. HMRC were totally useless about it and ended up getting heavy with me saying I'd told them the wrong figures!
As a result I don't pay any tax through my tax code on any of my employments, just a massive wodge every Jan/Jul
It's a pain but I can't be bothered to argue with them.
My tax code is a complete mess thanks to a useless administrator at one of my employments paying me somebody else's pay for about 6 months, across a tax year. HMRC were totally useless about it and ended up getting heavy with me saying I'd told them the wrong figures!
As a result I don't pay any tax through my tax code on any of my employments, just a massive wodge every Jan/Jul
It's a pain but I can't be bothered to argue with them.I had similar, but HMRC saying i owed them a couple of grand, despite me having done a voluntary self assessment, worked out i owed them 4 grand, and paid it to them back in July.
Their automated calc systems just don't appear to link up with self assessment. I phoned them and after explaining a couple of times they were eventually able to confirm i had indeed done a self assessment, updated their records and told me to tear up the demand letter. (Which by the way, stated very clearly that although this is what they'd calculated, it was fully my responsibility to check the calc and let them know if anything was wrong with it - in your case you know they've excluded the refund already given).
I would definitely contact them in your shoes. I know it would be nice to get two refunds, but it's wrong, you know that and I'm sure it would end up causing issues down the line.
Their automated calc systems just don't appear to link up with self assessment. I phoned them and after explaining a couple of times they were eventually able to confirm i had indeed done a self assessment, updated their records and told me to tear up the demand letter. (Which by the way, stated very clearly that although this is what they'd calculated, it was fully my responsibility to check the calc and let them know if anything was wrong with it - in your case you know they've excluded the refund already given).
I would definitely contact them in your shoes. I know it would be nice to get two refunds, but it's wrong, you know that and I'm sure it would end up causing issues down the line.
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