How to contact HMRC for tax help

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HMRC payment helplines: VAT, corporation tax, payroll

HMRC rules and regulations can seem complicated and confusing, and this can often lead to sole traders, business owners and company directors making mistakes that could cost them dearly in the future. However HMRC has a number of ways that it tries to offer help to people so that they don’t end up falling foul of the system. It provides online help on it’s website in the form of guides, videos and webinars, and you can also get personalised assistance via either phone, post, online forms or through live web chats.

There are also a number of phone help lines that you can use to get advice from HMRC, especially if you need to pay your HMRC VAT bill, pay your HMRC corporation tax bill, or pay your HMRC payroll bill such as PAYE or NI collected from your employees.

HMRC VAT Helpline

General Enquiries

If you have any general enquiries about VAT, HMRC operate a dedicated VAT advice service.

How to pay your VAT

If you want to pay your VAT bill then this can be done via any of the below methods, but please note that you cannot pay directly over the phone. To pay your VAT bill you can either:

HMRC Corporation Tax Helpline

General Enquiries

If you have any general enquiries about Corporation Tax, HMRC operate a dedicated Corporation Tax advice service. You will need to quote your 10-digit Unique Tax Reference when you call/write.

Lines are open 8am-6pm Monday-Friday

How to pay your Corporation Tax

If your taxable profits are more than £1.5 million then you must pay your Corporation Tax in instalments. If your total taxable profits are under £1.5 million then you must pay your Corporation Tax bill 9 months and 1 day after the end of your accounting period. In this case then you can pay your Corporation Tax bill via any of the below methods, but please note that you cannot pay directly over the phone.

To pay your Corporation Tax bill you can either:

To pay from an overseas account you should use the following details:

Inform HMRC that you don’t owe any Corporation Tax

If you do not owe any Corporation Tax for the current period then you must inform HMRC or they will continue to send you payment reminders. You can either:

HMRC Payroll Helpline

General Enquiries

If you are an employer and have any general enquiries about Payroll, HMRC operate a dedicated Payroll advice service.

General enquiries for new employers

There is also a dedicated service for new employers:

Make PAYE or NI payments

If you are an employer and wish to make your PAYE or National Insurance payments, you can either:

HMRC also operates a dedicated helpline for general advice about how to pay your employees’ PAYE or to order payslip booklets. Please note that you cannot make payments via this phone line.

HMRC Call Waiting Times

HMRC deals with 45 million individuals and more than 5.4 million businesses and each year it receives more than 50 million phone calls and 12 million letters and the news is often full of stories about the incredibly long waiting times for HMRC phone lines and postal replies. However HMRC have recently invested in significantly higher levels of staff to try and deal with enquiries more efficiently.

The individual contact pages generally include information about the best times to call those specific lines, but in general a recent study found that waiting times were shortest between 8.30am-9.30am and between 12noon-12.30pm, whereas they were longest between 4.30pm-5.00pm.

HMRC have also published figures showing the contact and response figures for January 2018:

If you are struggling to pay your VAT, corporation tax, payroll or any other HMRC bill then contact Real Business Rescue today. Our business recovery and turnaround experts have nearly 30 years’ experience working with companies that are experiencing financial difficulties, taking the time to understand your situation before offering practical advice about how to move forward.