I've been writing and posting reminder letters to a couple of clients this morning. I've had the majority of the information I need for their tax returns but am waiting for the remainder - I've been waiting for the best part of a month.
For one of them I've mentioned that he could be eligble to make a marriage allowance claim which would reduce his wife's tax by £230. The downside, and I've said this in the letter, that there are several technical problems with HMRC computers, which could easily result in creating problems with their tax returns. Last week I discovered that for another client in a simular position, although I filed his and his wife's tax return 4 months ago, although the wife's tax return had gone through correctly, his had been rejected. There were no error messages when I filed it, his tax account shows that it was received, I had received the standard successful submission of his return - it was just that the tax account show nil to pay. When I rang HMRC they told me it had been rejected, I had received no phone calls, letters or emails to tell me this. They have had to send an email to their rejections team and I'm now waiting to hear back from them.
It's clear that the tax system is now so complex that HMRC computer systems are not able to cope with all tax returns. They don't have the resources to be able to get on top of things so this is the result.