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Hi All,
I hope someone can help me with sound advice...
I was assesed in June 2014 with my ex wife applying to the CMA and calculated to pay £400 a month on an income of £30,000. As a Firefighter i have an occupational pension which i was originally told was included in the assessent, My pension payments are £3000 which brings my gross income down to £27,000.
So after being sent round chasing my tail as a newbie to the CMA and they ignored my letters for four months i eventually found out that they had used a tax return which was fourteen months out of date (2012-2013). To add to the confusion they was calling this my 2013 tax year and not 2012 which the majority of the tax year is in..(am i wrong in thinking that?) . In 2012i took on a small driving job to help pay of some debts from the marraige which coincidently calculated to around the sum of £3000 for the year.
I was payinjg £392.00 per month instead of £353.00 for a whole year and within that year was of long term sick from work for nine months (although still on full pay from the fire service).
When i asked for my original assessment to to be reconsidered as i no longer did the driving job the CMA replied that my income would have to rise or fall 25% before being reassessed. I provided my P60, tax return from the HMRC and pay slips for the year 2013 as a proof of my income and still they were adamant that my payments would not change.
I am now taking them to an appeal hearing and believe that the CMA had other options in which to assess my income apart from the information supplied by the HMRC?
I believe they discriminated against me as a paying male parent and failed to act on information supplied by myself and failed to act in a timely manner to resolve this over payment. I also believe they have denied me the quality time i could have used that money for to spend with my children and left me in a situation where i was close to homelessness, (as single dads we know how tight money is paying rent, food, bills etc).
I could have been paying 24% aboive my income for awhole year and they would still not have changed, i wonder what would have happened if i was 24% under?
Can anyone advise please?
As a footnote again i was wrongly assessed this year with an estimated income of just £1095! Suddenly the CMA assessed me on my last five pay slips which happens to be a far more accurate figure.. Although they did make the mistake to think unjustifyibly that i was in arrears by £425.. More and more mistakes..
Please Help
The CMS do have the rule of 25% change before they reassess (and it does apply if you are underpaying, as well as overpaying), but as I understand it, there is an annual review anyway and that uses the latest figures they have - see this:
It might be worth contacting your MP - they can get the ombudsman to look at the case, again this might help
Thanks for your quick reply I must stress that it was my original assessment that was wrong and my question is do the CMA have other options to assess an income apart from solely the HMRC?
Oh and I'm at the appeal hearing stage which is oral and already booked
I think they can use whatever information they can get, though I would expect that there should be diligence that it is accurate - for instance for self employed, I believe a signed statement from an accountant will suffice. I think the change with HMRC is that they used to have to request it on a case by case basis, which was slow, whereas I think now they have easier access to it.
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