My adviser made a mistake. Why should I pay the £5k tax penalty?

Times

a day ago

For more than a decade my husband and I were clients of a financial advice firm called Addidi Wealth. During this time I was working for the civil service and would exceed my pension allowance (the annual amount that can be saved into a pension while still qualifying for tax relief) every year — leaving me with an income tax bill on the excess.
I used the Scheme Pays system to settle the tax, which meant that money was deducted from my pension and paid to HM Revenue & Customs.
Every year I would send a form to my financial adviser who would then arrange this with my pension company on my behalf. My problem started in 2020 after Addidi Wealth was bought by another financial advice firm called Progeny and our adviser left the business. After 14 months with our new adviser, my husband and I decided to seek advice from another company.
Fast forward to last year when I had a bill from HMRC saying that I owed income tax of more than £19,000 and a late payment penalty of £4,160. HMRC explained that I had exceeded my pension allowance in 2019/20 and had not paid tax on the excess. I was shocked because this meant that Progeny had failed to carry out my Scheme Pays request all those years ago. Even more concerning was that Progeny had carried out two annual reviews since that event which were based on the erroneous assumption that the tax liability had been settled.
Progeny said that in 2020 it had sent the Scheme Pays paperwork to MyCSP, the company which operates the civil service pension scheme, although it hasn't provided any evidence that MyCSP had carried out my request. I spoke to MyCSP which said it never received the paperwork from Progeny.
I have since paid the tax owed and the £4,161 penalty. I have also paid my accountant an extra £750 for their time spent liaising with HMRC. I think Progeny's service fell short of reasonable expectations and that it should reimburse me for these costs, but it won't.
It cannot be right that I am left out of pocket. I have spent many hours trying to resolve this and I can't begin to describe the stress this has caused.Name and address supplied
You had paid Progeny more than £10,000 in annual fees for a fully-advised service, so you rightly expected the company to have managed your request without you having to worry about a surprise tax bill later down the line.
In 2020 the maximum amount you could pay into your pension and still get tax relief was £40,000 a year. The allowance increased to £60,000 in 2023, although this starts to reduce once you earn more than £200,000 a year. You can also carry forward any unused allowance from the past three years.
When you exceed your pension allowance, you no longer qualify for tax relief which means you have to pay income tax on the excess. You can either pay this yourself from savings, or you can ask your pension company to pay it under the Scheme Pays system.
To use Scheme Pays, you would ask your pension company to give you a quote outlining how much it would need to deduct from your pension. If you're happy with the quote, you sign a form to accept it and the pension company would then confirm that it has paid the tax.
MyCSP said it had sent Progeny a quote for £19,183 back in October 2020 but Progeny never accepted it. Yet Progeny showed me an email it had sent to MyCSP in December of that year attaching a form that made it clear that it was accepting the quote. It had also sent a second chasing email in January 2021 but never heard back. Even though the emails were sent to the correct place, MyCSP said it didn't have a record of those messages.
When I spoke to the Cabinet Office, which is responsible for the civil service pension scheme, it said: 'MyCSP makes every effort to get things right and we understand the member's distress.' It said you must raise a formal complaint before it would investigate further.
This does not change the fact that MyCSP never sent an acknowledgment to confirm that it had carried out the request, so I didn't think Progeny had done enough to ensure it had been processed. Progeny had also been managing your finances for months afterwards, so this issue should have been brought to light a lot sooner.
I urged Progeny to take another look at your complaint and it reviewed the situation and agreed to pay your late payment fee and extra accountancy costs. It also offered you £500 compensation for the distress and inconvenience caused.
Progeny said: 'Our usual processes ensure that instructions are carried out correctly and in a timely manner, so this was an isolated incident. We have acknowledged that in this instance it was Progeny's responsibility to confirm the form had been received and, as such, we would be happy to cover the costs. Through reimbursing the cost we intend to put our former client back in the financial position she would otherwise have been in before the matter occurred.'
But you weren't totally satisfied because you said the financial advice you had been given since 2020 had been based on inaccurate information. You said: 'I have shared my old statements with my new adviser, but I now believe these documents were based on incorrect information, meaning the value of my pension will be wrong as well as my retirement projections.'
• HMRC made a mistake — but won't give us our £15k back
You wanted Progeny to reimburse the financial advice fees that you had paid since this happened. But the company said you had got advice 'in all areas' and that it delivered all its ongoing services, so it refused.
You were disappointed and debated taking your complaint to the ombudsman, but Progeny said it would retract its offer if you went down that route and would abide by the ombudsman's decision. In the end you accepted Progeny's offer in a bid to put this sorry saga behind you.
You said: 'I still maintain that Progeny failed to show me any duty of care. I just hope that others don't have a similar experience.'
I live alone in a three-bedroom flat, which is up for sale because I can no longer afford to live here. As there was a large landslip that affected the Isle of Wight, I am struggling to find a buyer.
My only income is from a pension that pays me £600 a month, but this year my water bill almost doubled from about £24 to £41 a month, which I simply cannot afford. I can't understand why my charges are so high, especially when my water use is minimal (I spend a lot of time caring for my mother who lives nearby).
Southern Water said that I don't qualify for a discount because I have a pot of savings. This isn't technically correct because the money in my account is from a loan I have taken out to pay for essential roof repairs. I am paying an extortionate rate of interest on this loan which is secured against my property. Southern Water says I must use the loan to pay my water bill, but this would leave me with a shortfall for the roof works and I would be in breach of my lease if I failed to pay.
I have pointed this out to Southern Water but it won't listen. My financial situation is extremely tight. Like so many others, I am struggling to pay my bills but this increase has tipped me over the edge. Name and address supplied
You are clearly struggling to keep your head above water and so it seemed unnecessarily harsh of Southern Water not to take your specific circumstances into account.
Water bills are set to rise 26 per cent on average this year, so your 71 per cent increase seemed totally out of proportion. I suspect this is partly because your water bills are estimated: your property doesn't have a water meter because you have a shared supply with two neighbours.
This seemed unfair, compounded by Southern Water refusing to put you on one of its special tariffs. It gives customers a 45 per cent discount on their bills if their household income doesn't exceed £22,020 a year and they have savings of less than £16,000. Your £7,200 income was well below £22,020, but your loan put you above the savings threshold.
• I've been lumbered with my landlord's water bill
Southern Water told me that once the repair works have been carried out and the loan has been used up, you could get the discount. But it would be another three months before the roof repairs were due to start and you said you would really struggle to meet your bills in the meantime. I asked Southern Water if it would at least give you some breathing space until you had paid for the repairs and it then agreed to give you a 45 per cent discount on your bills, saving you £220 over a year.
Southern Water said: 'We are sorry to hear of the impact this experience has had on this customer. We are increasing our package of financial support, which will see us add a further 18,000 eligible customers to our minimum 45 per cent discount scheme.'
It also said it could look at installing a water meter so that your bills were based on your actual use.
You said: 'I cried tears of relief once I knew the payments were within an amount I could afford, and I am certain this would not have happened without your help. Let's hope my property sells soon.'
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