I watched yesterday’s Panorama programme “Are you paying too much tax” and could not believe how lightweight and uninformative it was.  There has been much publicity over the past few weeks about the implementation of HMRC’s new PAYE system (NPS) and how as a result of bringing the Revenue’s affairs up to date, several million assessments have been issued to employees of multiple jobs or where they have pensions.  Panorama offered very little additional information other than explaining that HMRC were going to have to make budget and staff cuts.

The programme tracked various taxpayers, mainly elderly, who had received assessments ranging from a few hundred pounds to £11,000.  At the end of the programme we were told that the amounts in the cases shown had all been written off.  What was not clear was whether those assessments were inaccurate or whether HMRC had treated those particular taxpayers favourably as a result of the programme.

I do not believe that a viewer who had been issued with a tax assessment would have been any the wiser following the programme and there were certainly no suggestions as to how taxpayers might check that the assessments were correct.

If you are in receipt of such a tax assessment and would like a professional to review it, we would be very happy to help for a reasonable fee.  Please contact us on info@saragraff.co.uk or post@taxingnannies.co.uk or telephone 020 8882 6847.