- Client owed refund of £1,600.
- Refund pulled for random "security checks".
- In the mean time HMRC issues threat of court action alleging client's Working Families Tax Credits overpaid by £150.
- I contact HMRC suggesting that perhaps they should simply deduct the £150 from the refund and pay the balance of £1,450 to the client.
- HMRC say they "cant do that as its a separate department". They then say the refund will not be paid until they have received the £150 from the client.
So its a "separate department" when it suits them, but, not separate when it comes to blackmailing clients.
Replies (18)
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Don't read HMRC's Vision statement C_D
You may go POP!
http://www.number10.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/HMRC-FINAL-Business-Plan.pdf
Well it gave me a good laugh this afternoon
POP
I cannot quite get over the fixation in that statement with ensuring that we can register with Co House at the same time as HMRC (do you think that this will create some huge cost savings??).
CD makes the point well, what we need are HMRC's systems to be joined up.
Why, why oh why didn't anyone appreciate this in designing the systems. Another thing that really upsets me is having to keep registering on various bit of the wretched Govt Gateway/Business link or whatever is going on (its not joined up thinking thats for sure). I don't know about you lot but I have an address book of IDs and passwords and I am going insane...POP too late, I'm booking into the funny farm.
More examples
A client has left safe employment to set up on their own through a company. His P45 is copied to Student Loan Company (I didn't know they did that either). SLC contact him for a UTR and when he says he hasn't been given one, they refuse to believe it saying that everyone is issued a UTR within 6 weeks.
SLC? Meet the Real World.
Issue a threat of court action for the £1,600.00 :)
Posted by Jason Dormer on Mon, 08/11/2010 - 16:49
Funny you should mention that. Just preparing a Claim Form for £1,200 which equates to a penalty notice issued in 2007 (but not chased by HMRC until now) for alleged non-submission of a P35. Client is adamant that it was submitted on time and subsequently sent in duplicates but failed to formally appeal against the penalty within 30 days. HMRC are refusing to accept a late appeal even though they sat on the matter for three and a half years.
Legally they are within their rights since the 30 day rule was breached and furthermore they can enforce what is effectively a judgment by default. The taxpayer has less rights than a common criminal who can mount a defence or file an appeal. If anybody else can think of an alternative course of action please let me know cos my head's hurting.
30 days not important
Whether you appeal within 30 days or not doesn't matter. They can't penalise you for not doing anything wrong.
Student Loans Company
For those that think HMRC are bad, SLC really do take the biscuit.
They added an admin charge on to my student loan to cover the 'costs of tracing my address' after they claimed that some post had been returned undelivered. Except I have never lived at the address they claimed they had written to. And the address they 'traced' me too was the address that I'd lived at all along - the address they already had on file. 11 years later (yes 11 years!) they still refuse to accept that they could possibly have made a mistake. And I still refuse to pay the charge.
The Students Loan Company. Staffed by people who make Frank Spencer and Norman Pitkin look organised and competent.
Debt Management & Banking Manual
The OP may find DMBM 70060 helpful. It suggests that the set-off can be made against tax credits if the taxpayer specifically requests this.
Separate departments?
They do seem to apply rules selectively.
We have a client who has entered into an agreement with HMRC to spread their Corporation Tax. Last quarter he was due a VAT Refund and they offset this refund against the Corporation Tax.
Joined up thinking
when it suits i.e. offsetting any liabilties against any refunds as the last post indicates...they've been exercising these powers of offset for some time.
Sorry ACDWebb but could only get to page 5 of the "Vision Statement" before I was violently sick and had to close the link and get some fresh air...you could not make it up could you....I thought Kieron Poynters hilarious 45 (or was it 46) point "response" to the missing disc fiasco was the ultimate in meaningless managementspeak bulls**t but this takes the art to a new level....
the older I get the more my mission statement vision aligns with a direction of travel converging on the next flight out of here.........
bit like
George W saying that waterboarding is not torture because "the lawyers told him it wasn't..."...duh...
its the old duck thing...if it looks sounds and smells like bull then its very likely is unless of course you are attempting the illusion of actually doing something through a smokescreen of utterly incomprehensible impenetrable meaningless jargon invented by idiots trying to justify their exhorbitant fees.....
remember a few years ago having to do a divorce share valuation for the wife...my "report" was a couple of pages and I charged about £500...the husband engaged one of the "big 4" who came up with this 50 page padded doorstop at a cost of £10,000....guess who won the day...?
Tried to convert to English.
I gave up at the word strategy in the Mission Statement. See below
HM Revenue & Customs’ vision is: to close the tax gap[1]; to make our customers[2] feel that the tax system is simple for them and even-handed; and to be seen as a highly professional and efficient organisation [3]. Our core purpose is to make sure that the money is available to fund the UK’s public services and help families and individuals with targeted financial support. By 2015, HM Revenue & Customs will become an administration that is at once more efficient, more flexible in dealing with customers and more effective in bringing in revenues. We will be smaller and more streamlined, as we remodel services for customers and invest in work against tax avoidance[4], evasion and fraud. We are using our customercentric[5] strategy[6] to deliver this transformation. Using our understanding of customers to focus our efforts where they will have the biggest effect, tailoring our services to the needs, abilities and motivations of our customers. In all that we do, we will work to ensure that everyone in the UK pays their fair share and support taxpayers to meet their responsibility to society by paying the tax that is due. [1] close the tax gap – this means to reduce the workload of the department by ignoring the difficult to collect tax and unfairly treating the entrepreneur, self employed, unrepresented and wealth creating SMEs by attempting to withhold tax refunds, erroneously issue fines and refuse to deal with queries in, what for any other organization would be deemed to be a reasonable time frame. [2] customer – clearly HMRC recognize that as customers we can shop around for a better, more efficient and “customer focussed” tax collection regime. Wait a minute that’s not correct. . [3] highly professional and efficient organisation – this is clearly an oxymoron. [4] tax avoidance- this is now something that is clearly spoken in the same terms as criminal activity. [5] customercentric – clearly B*****it. [6] strategy - a carefully devised plan of action to achieve a goal, or the art of developing or carrying out such a plan. Track record of this organization would indicate that this is a highly optimistic use of the word. Interestingly in biological terms a strategy is a behaviour or adaptation that improves viability. Perhaps extinction is on the way and a newer more suited to the environment creature will take it’s place. HMRC Sapiens perhaps.
To be fair
I did warn you NOT to look.
Mission statement - Wikipedia is your friend
In fact so many of THESE work