HMRC has notified BIFA about a VAT collection issue affecting a limited number of declarations submitted between October 2022 and April 2023. As a result, the VAT has not been collected correctly from customers’ Duty Deferment Accounts (DDA) and will be taken from the accounts on the 15th of September.
This issue only occurred on a small number of declarations between October 2022 and April 2023 (less than 0.4% of declarations) and has now been resolved so will not occur on future declarations.
HMRC is planning to introduce these amounts for collection within the direct debit on 15 September 2023 and all traders impacted by this change will be contacted in advance of the funds being collected. The email address linked to the duty deferment account will receive an email during August 2023.
The email will come from a no-reply HMRC mailbox and detail the dates, Movement Reference Numbers (MRNs) and amounts impacted. It will also give a contact email address for any queries from traders in relation to the collection of funds. Any emails to this mailbox will be picked up as a priority.
Should traders have financial concerns around the collection of funds on 15 September they should contact the email address provided and we will work with them to agree alternative collection dates/amounts to suit all parties.
This only impacts a subset of traders. We are not asking traders to do anything in advance but want to forewarn all parties that emails would be sent in August 2023 and if traders do receive communication from HMRC on this subject, it is an authentic email.
We have also identified a linked issue to this involving cash accounts, whereby a small number of transactions have been cleared and the funds have already been collected but the declarations and amounts have not been sent to the traders’ cash account dashboard.
We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused. The root cause of this issue has been resolved and should not occur in future.
