Obviously every case is different, but the whole process normally takes between 2 – 12 months, depending on how quickly you reply to our information requests. Once we submit a claim to the Tax Office, we will write and tell you.
Depending on the Tax Office handling your claim, it normally takes between 1-3 months to complete simple claims and anywhere from 3 – 12 months for more detailed ones. Some complex cases take longer to win, but if we believe you are owed money, we will do everything in our power to recover it for you.
At all times, we will be monitoring the progress of your claim and approximately every 5-6 weeks, a reminder is automatically sent to the Tax Office
What if I cannot find all the information you request?
Do not worry. Provide what information you can but in every case, you must return our forms. We will do our best to process your claim with the information you have provided.
It helps speed up your claim if we have your original latest P60, although a copy of your payslip is acceptable. If we submit a claim to the Tax Office, they require your original P60, so by having it on file, it avoids any unnecessary delay. In all cases, your original documentation will be returned to you.
NB. It is advisable to copy any document you send to us in case you need it .
You may not have claimed all the tax allowances you could have claimed during the last 6 years. If you did not know they exist and how they apply to your personal circumstances, you are unlikely to have claimed them.
Without using this service, you are unlikely to recover any tax you may be owed, so you should look at this as 60p in the pound gained, not 40p in the pound lost. What is more, there is no risk.
Consider the alternatives: -
You can contact the Tax Office yourself, but you will need to know exactly which allowances you are and have been entitled to and when each allowance should have been applied. If you do manage to get a refund, how do you know it is correct? You may have missed another refund that only a professional tax expert would notice;
OR
Your can pay an accountant to do it, (at least £100-£150), whether or not you get a refund. You could pay them and then find you owe tax! If your case becomes complex, or the Revenue starts asking for lots of information, the accountants’ fee will rise very quickly.
How can you assess my tax situation when you are only asking a few questions?
The process is designed to work in a simple, easy to follow manner. The first questionnaire you completed picked up on the main areas of interest and having reviewed your answers, we will ask you for more information in the areas of potential claim identified.
Depending on your answers to these further questions, we may need to write to you again to clarify certain details, but over a period of time, we will gather the information necessary to decide whether or not you are due a refund.
I need my P60 / wage slips back. How do I get them?
Write to us quoting your national insurance number, name and full postal address and stating the date you need the documents by and we will return the documents ASAP.
However, please be aware that if we have submitted the documents to the Tax Office, we will have to wait until they return them to us before we can send them out to you.
It appears you are asking me the same questions more than once. Why?
There are occasions when the answers given to a question do not actually tell us what we needed to know, so we have devised a method of asking for the required information in several different ways allowing us to get the correct details. If we did not do this, there is a greater chance that the Tax Office will question the claim causing unnecessary and significant delays in processing it, or that we would be unable to submit a claim due to lack of information.
I have sent in all my information and I have not heard anything?
Between now and a claim being submitted to the Tax Office, we will be in regular contact, but if you have not heard anything for over 3 months and you would like a progress report, you can call our telephone helpline. Once we have submitted a claim for you we will update you approximately every two months, until the Tax Office completes the case. We will also be writing to the Tax Office with reminders until they complete your case. Remember, we do not get paid until we have secured your refund!
We will write and tell you that, according to the information you have supplied, you are not owed a refund. At the same time, we will return any documents you sent to us.
You will receive a copy of the computations from your Tax Office, either before or at the same time as we do. It normally takes 14 – 21 days before you receive your cheque as cheques are sent to us from a different Tax processing office to the computations. We normally dispatch cheques to you within 1 week of receipt.
We take great care to ensure that your rebate cheque is sent out as quickly as possible to the address we hold on your file. Unless you have moved and did not inform us, this will be the same address from which we have corresponded with you throughout the term of your review.
Very occasionally clients inform us that they have not received their cheque, in which case we have to put a stop on it with our bank who charge us a fee of 10. This fee will be deducted from any replacement cheque we re-issue. However, in cases where the rebate was less than 10 we will advise you to conduct a further search as the charge can not be recouped.
Where a cheque is returned to us to be made out in a third party name or because it is out of date, it will be replaced without charge.