Readers’ forum: Computer says no

We have a client who was resident in Canada for all of 2016-17. In that year they had the following UK income: UK rental profits of £63 500; UK dividends of £15 000; trust income (rental) from individual pension plan £25 500 gross with tax paid £5 100.

The client’s 2016-17 self-assessment tax return was rejected because it was covered by exclusion 57 due to the treatment of the notional tax credit on dividends available as a non-resident. HMRC’s original calculation was not giving any deduction for the tax credit. We therefore submitted a paper return with a reasonable excuse.

HMRC has now processed the return and issued a calculation. But this does not agree with the calculation by our software provider which is adamant that its computation is correct. The provider does not rely on HMRC’s calculations but rather writes its own...