Taxhug.com - any good/bad experiences?

the summer me

Hi all,

So as its P60 time, I'm finally reminded to try my hand at a tax refund. I always put it off and then forget so I've only actually applied for 1 of the last 5 years so I've plenty of scope to (hopefully) get some money back.

To do the grunt work across the various years I want to apply for, I was considering using a tax refund service and these guys popped up in my Facebook feed during the week. You visit their site, punch in your various figures etc and they send you a form to send on to Revenue with everything mapped out for refund, they just charge a €49 flat fee for the work done.

Has anyone used them as yet, is the calculation reliable, are they reliable etc? Just want to ask here as every second person either loves or loathes Taxback.com for example (them hounding you for years after etc).

Thanks all

barneystinson

Basically you'll be paying them €49 for nothing. You still have to do pretty much everything that needs to be done in relation to the claim.

Just to be clear that applies to all these services, not just taxhug. The people actually handling your claim probably know little more about the tax system than you, they're just following a checklist. A checklist that you could compile yourself in about 20 minutes googling the numerous articles and revenue guidance.

Chestnutter2

I don't really agree, barneystinson. I used TaxHug about a month ago and found it very good. I has used Revenues service last year and their system is hard to use and I didn't get to see the calculation before. I thought seeing what I was due was quite cool to be honest and it was easy.

For what I remember, TaxHug don't charge commission like Taxback or the rest. I got back over €2100 and it only cost me €49 or something like that. Had I used Taxback, I think it would've cost me over €250! Ridiculous I know!

Geuze

A pen, one sheet of paper, and a calculator is all you need to do your own income tax computation.

No need to pay anybody.

UCDVet

Chestnutter2 wrote: »

I don't really agree, barneystinson. I used TaxHug about a month ago and found it very good. I has used Revenues service last year and their system is hard to use and I didn't get to see the calculation before. I thought seeing what I was due was quite cool to be honest and it was easy.

For what I remember, TaxHug don't charge commission like Taxback or the rest. I got back over €2100 and it only cost me €49 or something like that. Had I used Taxback, I think it would've cost me over €250! Ridiculous I know!

I haven't used TaxHug - but I did log into the PAYE website and went through all the things I could add/claim/apply for and I thought I had my taxes done correctly.

I later found out, from a co-worker, that there were more tax credits out there that weren't on the PAYE website. I had no idea. I ended up learning I could deduct tuition fees (maybe this is common knowledge, but I'm an immigrant and it was news to me). It'll end up being almost €3000 that I would have missed out on.

For someone clueless like myself, TaxHug might be a good idea. Maybe not every year, but once and a while as a sanity check. Once I heard there was a tuition credit, I was able to find the specifics of it and apply on my own. But I just didn't know about it at first.

Chestnutter2

Geuze wrote: »

A pen, one sheet of paper, and a calculator is all you need to do your own income tax computation.

No need to pay anybody.

What?? Sorry but you don't know what you're talking about! The normal joe soap in the street neither knows or wants to manually calculate their income tax. Anything that makes my life easier, like TaxHug, is great.

Mr. Incognito

Chestnutter2 wrote: »

What?? Sorry but you don't know what you're talking about! The normal joe soap in the street neither knows or wants to manually calculate their income tax. Anything that makes my life easier, like TaxHug, is great.

Or you could file early and let revenue do it for you.

barneystinson

Chestnutter2 wrote: »

What?? Sorry but you don't know what you're talking about! The normal joe soap in the street neither knows or wants to manually calculate their income tax. Anything that makes my life easier, like TaxHug, is great.

Hmmm, registered last week in order to extol the virtues of taxhug.... I'm going to go ahead and call shill on this...

Geuze

Chestnutter2 wrote: »

What?? Sorry but you don't know what you're talking about! The normal joe soap in the street neither knows or wants to manually calculate their income tax. Anything that makes my life easier, like TaxHug, is great.

I do know as I have completed maybe 15-20 income tax returns.

If I can do it, anybody can.

Paddy001

Is it just me that thinks some of these blog posts are a bit misleading? Take this one for example:

http://blog.taxhug.com/5-tax-refunds-teachers-miss-out-on/

"You could be due €608 to €279 per year, depending on your position" This is not strictly true - the amount due would in reality be 20% of this but this is not made clear.

"Any time in the past four years, if you visited a GP or dentist you can get 20% of the cost back" This is also inaccurate - dental expenses are only allowed in a limited set of circumstances.

I could go on but I won't!

2ndcoming

Whoever set this up probably learned their trade working for some of the better known of these types of companies.

The €49 flat fee is actually ingenious because the vast majority of "the normal joe soaps in the street" who "neither knows or wants to manually calculate their income tax" isn't going to be due much more than that as a refund 9 times out of 10.

It's a logical development from the percentage model which would have worked fine about 4 or 5 years ago when the vast majority of new customers genuinely had no clue about claiming their tax back and had 4 years of rent credit, bins, trade union fees and health expenses (@41%) to claim straight away.

With 3 out of those 4 credits now extinct or greatly reduced the chances of the average punter being due much of a refund at all are so slim they'll more than likely in reality pay about 100% commission for anything they get back.