Tax Office

The tax office is a mystery to itself. My DH has had the same issues as yourself in getting through to them. Despite him having a letter from them saying he didn’t owe anything a letter arrived in the post this week saying he owed them £1,600 part of which was a fine for late payment. As I say how they operate (or don’t ) is a mystery. I feel along with NHS England this is another department that needs an overdue overhaul.


I can sympathise with you and hope you get it sorted.

I do tax returns for a small number of people and I usually don't need to log in - the main screen has a list of all the people I deal with and all I need to do it choose the right reference number (16 digits, I think) and everything else comes up automatically.

Like the rest of the Civil Service, staff cut backs have left services under-staffed and overworked. I’m told that the best time to ring is first thing in the morning.

I can’t explain why you can’t log into your Gateway Account.

The usual procedure it to enter your 12 digit ID plus your password and they will do two-step authentication, sending you a security code to enter which should get you in.

Try emailing [email protected] stating your National Insurance number and explaining your issue. That's the HMRC Personal Tax Operations Complaints Team.

Write them a letter, that’s what I had to do after many frustrating attempts to speak to someone. They took a while to reply, about a month but got sorted eventually.

After a recent bereavement I tried to log on with my Government Gateway Account.

The reply that I received said as I had not used it for several years I neede to re-register.

I have now done this and all is fine.

I've had to ring them twice recently for a Gateway log-in issue. The first time I had a non-current PAYE ref for our business so had to ring back after finding another possible.
I could have been lucky but it only took approx 30 minutes for both calls, & did manage to get things sorted with only a moderate rise in my blood pressure.