HMRC 4+

British expats excluded!!!

I’m British and live in France. I pay UK tax, have U.K. pensions and have used this app for years. However suddenly I have to verify myself and the verification requires a U.K. address, and a number of other documents which I do not have since I no longer live in the U.K. I can still use the website which is very cumbersome. So why have you excluded a whole group of people? Did you not consider how expats are supposed to verify themselves? The app was very useful and I suggest you rethink your verification. Also why have the verification if one can still use the website? The whole idea is ridiculous!!

UPDATE: the developer has rectified the problem and notified me and the app now works as it should. So thank you.

Developer Response ,

Hi, apologies if you have been experiencing difficulties. There was an issue that affected a number of customers but this should now be resolved. If you could please try again to get into the app you should hopefully find this is ok. If not then please contact us via hmrcappsupport@hmrc.gov.uk and we will assist you further.

Payment of tax bill

I logged into the hmrc app via a web browser and did my tax return. I got several emails to my email account with a very general “if you have a bill to pay you should pay it now” type message. I kept logging in to the web browser but it isn’t at all obvious how to find this information. You would expect there would be something in messages but there is nothing there. I eventually found a bit in the self assessment section about how much i owed but there is no link to pay it. You can find the payment section but there all you get is a box where you can type some amount you want to pay rather than anything where you specifically see the bill and can pay it. I then installed the app on my phone tho I don’t really want a dedicated app on my phone for something i do once a year. Here it was clear what my bill was, i clicked to pay, chose my bank, it took me to my bank app and i chose the account and then it redirected me to some third party thing called ecopay that just hung for 10-15 mins. I eventually reloaded and went through the payment again with the same result but then when I eventually reloaded it said “paid”. So ecopay is very poor and why on earth can’t I just pay directly from my bank rather than go through this random third party. This is all well established tech that very small companies get right and I don’t think being government or public sector is an excuse for delivering such a poor service.

Tax credit renewal is confusing

This is the first year I have used the app to renew my tax credits. Initially I was prompted for a PIN but didn’t have one. The app needs to explain for first time users that they will be directed to create a PIN the first time they use the app AFTER they have logged in. I then had to re-complete the login process using two factor authentication text sent to my phone and was subsequently asked to create a PIN which I did and enable fingerprint ID.

The questions in the app seemed clear and easy to follow with one notable exception. The total earnings figure is automatically generated from my P60. Fine, but there is nowhere to input allowable deductions such as allowable pension contributions and uniform maintenance allowance. Having worked my way round the questions several times in a loop I reasoned the only way to report these deductions was to amend the P60 figure, despite the online form confusingly stating that this field was for the earnings figure BEFORE deductions. There is NOWHERE ELSE to input any other earnings figure. This is confusing and will lead to underpayment of tax credits if people are not aware of this and do not include their allowable deductions here.