I have been trying to sort out a problem with HM Revenue & Customs for more than nine months.
It has continued to chase me for a capital gains tax bill of £109,696.38, despite me providing repeated evidence that I have already paid.
This includes more than £2,191 in interest penalties. Please help.
O. M., Elstree, Herts.
Sally Hamilton replies: When you sold a piece of land you owned in November 2024, you calculated you owed about £109,000 in capital gains tax (CGT), made the declaration to HMRC on April 7, 2025, and included a cheque for the full sum.
This was cashed by HMRC a couple of weeks later and you thought that was that.
Demand: HMRC is hounding a reader for a capital gains tax bill of almost £110,000 despite it having already been paid
Fast-forward to October 2025, when you sent off your self-assessment tax return. This was returned because HMRC wanted you to complete the CGT section.
You did so and attached a copy of the letter you sent in April 2025 with that big fat cheque.
Then, around the turn of this year, you started receiving six-figure demands for outstanding CGT. HMRC said you owed £107,505.05 and, in April, you also received a late payment fine of £5,375.
You assumed an error on HMRC’s part, and that it would be rectified. But the tax office ignored your letters.
Following a 30-minute wait on the phone to its helpline you were put through to an automated system where the only options were to either pay or end the call. Sigh.
After this taxing experience, you fired off another letter and attached proof of payment for the third time.
When you received yet another demand from HMRC in May, this time for £109,696.38, which included interest, you felt your only way out of the nightmare was to contact me.
I swiftly asked HMRC to investigate and also why it was hounding you for money you had already paid. It took about ten days for inspectors to get to the bottom of it, at which point they contacted you directly.
Electricians, plumbers and bricklayers are in huge demand.
Have you retrained in a trade?
If so, I’d like to hear from you. Email: sally@daily mail.co.uk
They offered their apologies and told you HMRC actually owed you money, as you had overpaid the original CGT bill by £2,047.64.
On your request, it is sending this sum by cheque. It confirmed it has also cancelled the £5,375 late payment fine and £2,191 in interest charges.
A spokesman says: ‘We apologise to him. We’ve confirmed that his account is up to date and sent him the refund he’s owed.’
HMRC’s investigations revealed that when you initially sent your CGT cheque, you had quoted your National Insurance number incorrectly, which was why the money wasn’t allocated.
Although you rectified this soon afterwards, the payment still wasn’t allocated correctly, which led to the penalty charge being issued. There was no explanation as to why the demands kept coming, or why HMRC ignored your repeated attempts at contact.
Nevertheless, you were delighted to finally have the taxman off your back and in gratitude have donated £200 to marfantrust.org, a charity I support.
If taxpayers have issues with HMRC, there are two main directions to take.
If it is a disagreement with HMRC’s decision on the tax charged, whether CGT or other direct tax, they should appeal first rather than make a complaint.
It should be done within 30 days of the decision via an appeal form or in writing to the relevant office.
Those with a complaint about HMRC’s service should proceed online, by phone or in writing. But don’t expect a speedy response.
Recent official figures showed the average response to an initial complaint took 40 days in 2025-26, up from 26.7 days in 2021-22. HMRC insists things are improving, but I couldn’t possibly comment.
I am a 70-year-old British citizen who lives in New York and I have held an account at Barclays in the UK since 1974, when I was a student at Birmingham University.
I have always been able to move money out of this account to my JP Morgan account in New York simply by phoning Barclays.
However, after switching my Barclays Reserve account to an Everyday Saver a few months ago, I was stopped from doing this.
I tried to use its banking app but that won’t work as this requires a UK mobile number. The bank says I must use its PINsentry card reader, which it claims to have sent to me, but I’ve not received.
This seems very outdated. My £56,000 is stuck in the account and I need it as I’m in the process of buying a new home. Please help.
L. F., New York.
Sally Hamilton replies: Having been in the US since the mid-1990s, you’ve made transfers from your Barclays account for years without any problem, more recently over the phone using voice recognition technology.
But when Barclays switched your account, you say it didn’t warn you this would put an end to transfers by phone.
Had you realised, you would have moved the whole balance to your JP Morgan account in New York.
Barclays told you it had posted a written notification of this security change to your US address, but you never received it.
The same fate befell the PINsentry card reader, which the bank said it also mailed. It did not arrive and left you without access to your cash at a vital time.
You spent many hours on the phone, but were repeatedly told that without the card reader, there was no way to transfer the funds.
The bank arranged to send another device, which would take at least ten days to arrive. You weren’t happy, as you were becoming desperate for your cash.
Just after you contacted me, you said you were notified that the second card reader had been delivered to your apartment block to ‘George’.
It was nowhere to be found. Your doorman said there was no record of this delivery and that no one called George lived in your building.
I asked Barclays if it could show some discretion and let you transfer your money using the old method. It initially repeated that the PINsentry device was the only option and it would post another out.
But when it didn’t arrive, the bank decided to be more flexible and helped the transfer go ahead using ‘another solution’, involving you answering security questions on the phone.
Barclays said: ‘We’re sorry for the inconvenience she faced in communicating with us.’
It paid you £70 as a goodwill gesture. It told me it had sent you another card reader, but when we caught up recently, you said you had still not received it.
Since you have only £20 left in this account, you are prepared to let it rest and you thanked me.
My wife and I recently had our old meter changed to a smart meter by British Gas.
We were initially £113.60 in credit but after three months we received an email that said we were £411.47 in debit.
It said our direct debit would have to increase to cover the cost. When also accounting for the money we’ve paid in over that time, it means we have used £947.26 worth of energy in just three months, which cannot be correct.
British Gas insists that’s what the reading says and won’t budge.
D.H., via email.
British Gas apologises for the incorrect readings and has compensated you £150.
***
In January 2025 I bought a mini fridge from Debenhams. In February this year I unplugged it for two months to travel to Australia.
When I returned, I plugged it back in but it didn’t work. The fridge came with a two-year warranty but Debenhams says this is a manufacturer’s warranty so we must contact it instead.
The manufacturer, however, says there’s only a one-year warranty on its products.
J.R., Devon.
Debenhams apologises and says the fault was reported outside the product’s standard warranty period. It maintains that the manufacturer is best placed to help you.
***
In January I called a friend who is ill. Later that day I received an email from her email address.
She said as she was unwell, could I buy her some Airbnb vouchers as a gift for a relative.
I bought a £250 voucher from Amazon using my Tesco Bank credit card, and sent it to the email address my friend had given me for her relative.
But when I later spoke to my friend, she had no idea about the voucher.
Her email had been hacked. Tesco refunded me under a chargeback request but later took the money back.
W.S., Bucks.
Tesco Bank will refund you as a goodwill gesture and Amazon has also agreed to pay you £250, which means you’ll get £500 in total.
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