Recovering Tax on the Halcrow Trust Payouts

[Steve_2]

Hi Bill,
A couple of months ago I wrote to the tax office to claim employer NI against my tax, but have not yet received a reply.

Re the investigation, I recently read the following article:
http://www.postlethwaiteco.com/resources/guide-unapproved-non-approved-share-options-and-long-term-incentive-plans-ltips

My understanding from this is:

• Beneficiaries/Optionholders paying the Employers NI is legit.
• Calculation of Employers NI should have been after deduction of Tax. Where as my payslip indicates it was done prior to deduction of tax. So I wonder if it's actually this overpayment that Halcrow and HMRC (NI section) are discussing?

Have I read correctly? Perhaps I've misunderstood the article?

[edit 16/10/14: Likely misunderstood, as this article is about Shares, not Loan Notes..]

[billmillington]

Hi Steve,
thanks for your note.
You have read it correctly as far as I can see but as you say, the article refers to shares and the guidelines may not apply ; but in my conversation it was made clear that the issue under investigation with Halcrow was that of our payment of Employers NI rather than tax. Notwithstanding this, I was advised to pursue the recovery of the tax on NI I paid separately . I would be interested to know how many claims have been made and what degree of success  achieved. Good luck with your efforts.

[vicscott]

Having received a rebate from HMRC for Employers Ni contributions after completion of my self-assessment submission, I posted news of this above. It is with some regret that I must advise that many months later I had a demand for under-payment of tax and a notice to pay immediately or suffer delay penalties. I duly paid up but continued to plead a case to no avail. The good news was that as I had not tried to conceal information they would not impose a fine!
So, although drawing state pension for over 20 years, The payment is still liable to Employers NI. Sorry, folks.