HM Revenue and Customs

5. Mr A complains to us about the actions of HMRC. He tells us it sent his tax repayment for 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 to a third-party company (the Company). He tells us he had not given the Company authorisation to receive this repayment and says it forged his signature. He says HMRC should not have sent the repayment to the Company. He is dissatisfied that HMRC did not carry out checks to ensure the correct signature and authorisation were matched.

6. Mr A says this situation and HMRC’s decision to issue the repayment to the Company has been stressful. He would like a payment from HMRC, equivalent to the reimbursement.

7. Mr A complains HMRC have failed to refund a Marriage Allowance (MA) tax claim between 2018-19 and 2021-22 as it had been arranged to be paid to a third-party company in 2022. HMRC says Mrs A authorised the Company to claim on their behalf. Mr A disputes this as he says the third-party Deed of Assignment (DOA) was invalid and included fraudulent signatures. HMRC state his wife signed up to the service online on 28 February 2024 whilst making the MA claim.

8. A DOA is a binding legal agreement where the customer, in this case Mr A, transfers the repayment to an agent or third party, in this case the Company. In this case the repayment is made up from the couples MA.

9. HMRC says it had received documentation from the Company to show it had Mrs A’s consent to proceed. Mr A disputes this and says they never granted such permission. He says the Company acted fraudulently and HMRC did not carry out its due diligence in authorising the repayment.

10. HMRC said after contacting the Company, Mrs A made the claim online on 28 April 2022 at 4.04pm. The claim provided personal information for Mr and Mrs A including their names, dates of birth, National Insurance numbers and the date of their marriage. The form also included eligibility questions in relation to the couple’s income for the years claimed. HMRC says only Mr and Mrs Chester would have known this information.

11. In January 2022 Mr A returned the P800 tax calculation HMRC sent him for 2019-20 with a note attached questioning his tax code and whether it should have ended in ‘M’ to reflect the Marriage Allowance. Mr A then phoned HMRC on 27 April 2022 and he was told, as his wife would be the one transferring the allowance to him, HMRC would need to speak to her directly. HMRC find no evidence Mrs A applied to transfer the Marriage Allowance to Mr A earlier than June 2022.

12. HMRC initially reviewed the claim it received from the Company on 8 July 2022. HMRC then sent Mr A a letter on 11 July 2022 telling him it had transferred some of his Personal Allowance to his wife. HMRC admitted this was a mistake, as it should have written to Mr A’s wife as the transferor and it had not processed the claim correctly or updated its records to show the MA transfer was in place. As a result of this, the P800 tax calculations Mr A received prior to July 2023 did not show the Company as his agent.

13. On 8 November 2023, HMRC wrote to Mr A to inform him it needed a written agreement from both him and the Company in order to revoke the assignment. HMRC gave Mr A 30 days to provide the written agreement, following this it would send 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 repayments to the Company.

14. Mr A did not provide the written agreement and HMRC issued the repayment to the Company in February 2024.

15. Having gone through HMRC’s complaint process, the Adjudicators Office (AO) informed Mr A it could not look into complaints about ‘issues that the courts could have considered or could consider’. HMRC had expressed that the DOD received from the Company was valid, and because of the service level agreement AO could not investigate this matter.

17. Mr A raised a complaint with our office after he was unsuccessful in pursing the repayment he believed was owed to him. In his complaint, Mr A said he had not given the Company the right to transfer his MA and claim his repayment.

18. The HMRC Charter states that ‘We’ll respect your wish to have someone else deal with us on your behalf, such as an accountant, friend or a relative. We’ll only deal with them if you have authorised them to represent you’. We understand it is not unusual for individuals to have someone acting on their behalf, whether that be a professional representative such as an accountant or a tax agent, or a personal representative such as a family member.

19. In its response, HMRC told Mr A it had investigated the Company and the way in which it processed the MA repayment and considered it to be legitimate.

20. We requested information from HMRC during our consideration of this complaint. As part of its response to us, HMRC included a copy of the DOA which the Company had submitted to HMRC on Mr A’s behalf in April 2022.

21. As mentioned above, a DOA is a legally binding document. HMRC’s ‘PAYE Manual’ covers the use of repayment claim forms and section PAYE91040 sets out the process of nominating and assigning individuals for repayments.

22. This states that, ‘if an individual has assigned the repayment to a third party, the assignee will usually be nominated on the claim form to receive the repayment. Repayment must be made to the assignee because he or she is legally entitled to it, even if the nomination section of the claim form has not been completed’.

23. Having reviewed the copy of the DOA provided to us by HMRC, this clearly lists the information specified in the relevant section of the ‘PAYE Manual’ above. The DOA provided to us includes a transfer of marriage allowance from Mrs A to Mr A and subsequent assignment to the Company. This is clearly stated as ‘I claim repayment of the amount owed to me and unconditionally assign the amount due for the tax years shown… [2019/19, 2019/20, 2020/21 and 2021/22]’.

24. There is no ambiguity in the document HMRC received, and it clearly shows Mr A nominated the Company to receive any tax payments transferred to him from his wife. We understand this will be upsetting for Mr A to read, and we are sorry for the distress this will cause. The document received by HMRC from the Company shows HMRC acted in line with the relevant PAYE guidance in accepting and processing his tax repayment.

25. The DOA form is an HMRC template form and clearly provides the names, addresses, National insurance numbers and date of marriage for Mr and Mrs A. The DOA form clearly indicates any tax repayments should be made to the Company. This form also includes a signature, which appears to belong to Mrs A. The form is signed and dated 28 April 2022 by the Company and shows the tax years being claimed for.

26. We understand from Mr A he believes the document must be fraudulent, as the signature does not match his wife’s.

27. There is nothing within the PAYE Manual that indicates HMRC is required to, or should, verify the DOAs it receives if an application provides the applicant’s signature. This means HMRC is under no obligation to contact either party to verify or confirm if the information or signatures provided are correct. This means we saw no failing in HMRC not taking this action in Mr A’s case.

28. Both HMRC and the AO advised Mr A that HMRC acted within its guidelines in issuing the tax repayment to the Company, informing Mr A that if he believed the deed to be fraudulent, it would be a matter for the courts to consider.

29. This clearly remains an upsetting and frustrating matter for Mr A, and we understand he feels strongly about this.

30. We hope it is clear how we considered what he told us and how we reached our decision HMRC acted in line with guidelines in sending his tax repayment to the Company. It is for this reason we will take no further action.

1. We have carefully considered Mr A’s complaint about HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). We can see from his correspondence he is unhappy with the responses he has received to his complaint so far and believes he has not received a fair outcome to his concerns. We were sorry to hear these events have caused him such frustration.

2. Having considered the evidence available to us, and the standards and guidance that set out how HMRC should carry out its work, we have decided to take no further action. This is because we cannot see any indications HMRC got things wrong.

3. The complaints we receive give valuable insight into the organisations we investigate, so we would like to thank Mr A for sharing his experience with us. Whilst we have found no indications something went wrong, it does not detract from Mr A’s experience, nor the distress caused by it.

4. We appreciate Mr A feels strongly about the complaint and our statement below sets out the reason for our decision.