PAYE Anytime - Made Double Entry on Illness Benefit, Oops!

FGR

Hey all. Hoping you can assist.

Given that it's Good Friday there won't be anyone working at Revenue until Tuesday so I could really do with your assistance.

During 2011 I was on Illness Benefit for a period which was paid directly to my employer and subsequently paid to me via regular pay.

Come 2012 when my P60 arrived I logged onto PAYE Anytime, observed that the illness benefit was defined as an additional income, which was fine. I then made a claim for medical expenses incurred by me. All was well until I reached the screen to enter income earned for the year according to my P60.

Stupidly I put in the total income, inclusive of illness benefit, which was displayed on my P60. The P21 arrived the day after then showing that I had underpaid my tax and, after having looked at it; realised it was because of my error above.

The problem is that they think I received approximately €6,000 in illness benefit when it was approximately €3,000.

I still fall well into the threshold of being entitled to claim back taxes as I paid in excess of 4,000 in tax that year.

So my question is - how do I go about mending this? I'm of the opinion that I'll probably need to get a letter from my employer outlining that the illness benefit had been paid directly to them instead of me - and forward that with the above explanation to revenue in hopes that they'll amend it all for me.

I also have my p60 in PDF form. Could I e-mail that to revenue and explain the situation to them and hopefully they can amend it there and then?

I'm suspecting that it will more than likely be the first option as opposed to the second - and that I could be waiting in excess of 3 months to get something done.

Speaking of which - considering their online service has gotten so fast. Has revenue been able to speed up applications made in writing in recent years? If so. How long would I be waiting for a reply if I go down the first road?

Thanking you for your time in reading this!

FGR

relax carry on

ForegoneReality wrote: »

Hey all. Hoping you can assist.

Given that it's Good Friday there won't be anyone working at Revenue until Tuesday so I could really do with your assistance.

During 2011 I was on Illness Benefit for a period which was paid directly to my employer and subsequently paid to me via regular pay.

Come 2012 when my P60 arrived I logged onto PAYE Anytime, observed that the illness benefit was defined as an additional income, which was fine. I then made a claim for medical expenses incurred by me. All was well until I reached the screen to enter income earned for the year according to my P60.

Stupidly I put in the total income, inclusive of illness benefit, which was displayed on my P60. The P21 arrived the day after then showing that I had underpaid my tax and, after having looked at it; realised it was because of my error above.

The problem is that they think I received approximately €6,000 in illness benefit when it was approximately €3,000.

I still fall well into the threshold of being entitled to claim back taxes as I paid in excess of 4,000 in tax that year.

So my question is - how do I go about mending this? I'm of the opinion that I'll probably need to get a letter from my employer outlining that the illness benefit had been paid directly to them instead of me - and forward that with the above explanation to revenue in hopes that they'll amend it all for me.

I also have my p60 in PDF form. Could I e-mail that to revenue and explain the situation to them and hopefully they can amend it there and then?

I'm suspecting that it will more than likely be the first option as opposed to the second - and that I could be waiting in excess of 3 months to get something done.

Speaking of which - considering their online service has gotten so fast. Has revenue been able to speed up applications made in writing in recent years? If so. How long would I be waiting for a reply if I go down the first road?

Thanking you for your time in reading this!

FGR

In order to correct the error you need to get a letter from your employer stating how they treated the illness benefit paid to them (did they include in in their p35 (your p60 figures). You will then have to send this to your local PAYE section where depending on a number of factors you could be waiting between 2 and 10 weeks for a resolution.

The reasons for the delays are many but this is pretty much how they breakdown:

1 The PAYE Anytime service has only an uptake of between 20 and 30% in some parts of the country. Out of that percentage there are some who never use the service at all. Some just login but then send in paper claims or get their pin but never login.
2 The last few years has seen a surge in correspondence to PAYE areas mainly by post even though the online service has been running for years. One of the main items are people just randomly sending in their P60s looking for a review which would take them 2 minutes online.
3 Reduction in staff numbers.

All three coupled with additional security checks on Revenues end mean response times are actually dropping because the majority of people refuse to use the online service.

FGR

Thanks for the reply Relax Carry On. I've sent a letter to my employer with a document from the Dept of Social Protection outlining illness benefit paid (but not stating where it went).

Hopefully they'll get back to me soon so I can forward everything to Revenue then.