Three days to save your SEISS grant
If taxpayers don’t respond to HMRC’s email by 22 March they will be prevented from making further SEISS claims and may face an enquiry into the grants already received.
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All recent HMRC interventions are threats
New traders
Repayment claims
And now this
What kind of a State do we live in that acceeds to threats being made to honest traders and keeps quiet about it, no publicity and no copies to tax agents
Aweb live with Rebecca and Paul yesterday suggests that HMRC are not REALLY trying to take agents out of the process
But everything they do suggests otherwise
https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/any-answers/compliance-check-what-docume...
Add this
Have HMRC not got a smartsearch capability?
See my other recent posts on the gutter level HMRC ethics have reached. I am afraid I am no longer prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. If it were just mind-blowing blundering incompetence that would be bad enough. I think it's more than that, right at the top there is a policy of dishonesty, bad faith and swindling.
The idea that I would say that about Revenue and Customs in 1991 when I qualified is laughable. What a tawdy, cheap journey to the bottom our tax authority embarked on when it became HMRC.
So, the taxpayer has told HMRC they have ceased trading which means they do not qualify for the grants, and yet HMRC are going out of the way to double check that?
Not sure why I see any need to bash HMRC for that, quite the opposite in fact
Quite right - surely this is what HMRC should be doing - checking into those who advised they had ceased trading but have then claimed grants
We had one ourselves who we persuaded to repay the 1st grant he incorrectly claimed...to be honest I'm glad this is one thing HMRC stopped Agents doing for clients. Apart from (yet more) work just imagine the time "debating" with clients whether they're entitled to claim as each claim opens...at least now it's them making the decision where it's debatable if they're eligible
Per the article, there are multiple reasons why the box could be ticked including some that have nothing to do with cessation of trade. That is a failing of the tax return form, which is HMRC's.
The response to this ambiguous box being ticked on a form sent to HMRC by a registered tax agent, is to reply to the taxpayer directly with not a peep to the agent, and potentially remove someone from the needed state support despite them having carried on their struggling trade without interruption and having reported as such on all forms filed with HMRC.
I can see some grounds for criticism.
HMRC never target the right businesses, always the little guy never the large fraudsters.
I presume HMRC will confirm that all letters and emails received by them are replied to within the same timescale.
(All pigs fed and watered and ready to fly)
Scammers presumably taking advantage of this worrying email sent me an email on 22nd Feb with the subject "Your Self-employed Grant for March 2021 has been Approved."
The sender is shown as H.M.R.C, but when you look more closely it is from [email protected].
The body of the email says:-
===
Hello,
If you're self-employed or a member of a partnership and have been impacted by coronavirus (COVID-19) you are eligible to claim a grant.
Government is giving a grant between 2,500 pounds and 7,500 pounds
if you are a tax payer.
You must download the form attached to this email and fill out the required
information to complete approval for your grant claim.
UK GOV
© All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated .
===
The attached file is very dodgy and *must not be opened*. I have looked at it and it is asking for name, address, date of birth, NI number, driving licence details, passport details, tax payer reference, bank account details.
what happens if a client hasn't received an email from HMRC. These clients would have registered for self employment after 5th April 2019.
I would expect an awful lot went to junk
HMRC NEVER used email
Always clearly a scam
If they use emails out then time they accepted emails in
My comment warning about a scam email I received on 22 Feb was, I feel useful to this discussion, yet has been removed.
Add it again would be good
Any warning about scams should be important to this site
It now appears (in pink), but I've repeated it below. The point is that non-technical people might not be able to distinguish between genuine emails and those that are fake. If someone opens the attachment on a similar email to the email I received then the scammers have everything needed to impersonate that person. Yet being suspicious of that genuine email could be very detrimental. (Of course, this will be well-known on this forum, but just thought I'd share it as it was just after HMRC's email was sent).
Scammers presumably taking advantage of this worrying email sent me an email on 22nd Feb with the subject "Your Self-employed Grant for March 2021 has been Approved."
The sender is shown as H.M.R.C, but when you look more closely it is from noreply.hmrc2(at)securesuite.uk.
The body of the email says:-
===
Hello,
If you're self-employed or a member of a partnership and have been impacted by coronavirus (COVID-19) you are eligible to claim a grant.
Government is giving a grant between 2,500 pounds and 7,500 pounds
if you are a tax payer.
You must download the form attached to this email and fill out the required
information to complete approval for your grant claim.
UK GOV
© All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated .
===
The attached file is very dodgy and *must not be opened*. I have looked at it and it is asking for name, address, date of birth, NI number, driving licence details, passport details, tax payer reference, bank account details.
HMRC have been fraying at the edges for a while and the forthcoming digital changes will highlight more issues do our mental health no good at all!
The significance of such letters warrant firmer communication method. The cynic in me feels like it's almost as if they do not want a response!
I have almost given up contacting them in many instances as most of the time I am left with just the cost of the phone call, (which in my opinion should be free anyway), and no resolution.
All problems arising out of Covid, I'm sure!
So I spend my life telling clients "HMRC don't send important emails" then when they finally decide to catch up with technology Agents are excluded from the process.
Just why do HMRC think people appoint Agents? It's because clients don't want to, or know how to, deal with HMRC.
HMRC should be ashamed of how they are blocking Agents from helping clients with this! It just isn't good enough and needs investigating.
Agreed.
And their incompetence needs to be out in the public domain more - as soon as it appears it seems to be shut down and never makes mainstream news! Clients just think we make a fuss about having to wait an hour to get through on the 'ADL' and 16 weeks for a letter to be answered!
When I got through
HMRC person at other end stated that the agent line is just put through to the standard client lines
WE ARE NO LONGER RELEVANT TO HMRC
Sadly we haven't been relevant for some years now! :-(
I've heard some horror stories of how they refer to agents internally! Don't know why because if they helped us to do our job we could help them to do theirs and everyone's life would be that little bit easier rather than constant antagonism!
"Sadly we haven't been relevant for some years now!"
It's worse than that ... the rot set in nearly 10 years ago when policy-makers within HMRC decided that there was little practical (and no moral) difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. Once this culture took root, it became evident that Agents were (by default) assumed to be encouraging tax avoidance (aka tax planning) and were thus categorised as untrustworthy (or 'the enemy').
This lead to plans for HMRC to take on the mantle of policing Agents - such that, without public procedure or means of appeal, Agents would be assigned a 'level'. Those with halos would be given all the support requested but, moving down the chain, some facilities would be made unavailable and eventually some 'routes' closed - until the bottom-most were reached who would basically be prevented from carrying out any Agent activity.
The mechanism for all this was seen to be the digitisation of tax collection (before MTD had been whispered) and was supported by the Cabinet Office. It then ran foul of 'politics' post-Cameron and is currently kyboshed ... but there are still pockets of senior supporters within HMRC.
Without wishing to sound like a typical conspiracy theorist ... it is no coincidence that ADL has been 'lost' or that the Agents Forum resembles a tumbleweed strewn desert or that the moans about HMRC on this site are reaching a crescendo!
After reading all the messages, still no clear, is the email a scam or not? None of my clients have received one to my knowledge.
After reading all the messages, still no clear, is the email a scam or not? None of my clients have received one to my knowledge.