Pissing Money Up The Wall

My sympathy to the paying agent who had an encounter with HMRC recently.

He acts as a paying agent for three principals with a total of 5 staff between. The tax/NI payments are less than £1500 pm, and as such he takes advantage of the option to pay only every 3 months.

The end of period payment for Months 1,2 & 3 in 2008/09 was due on the 5th July, with a deadline for the payment to be in HMRC's bank by the 19th July.

Payment was duly made on the 9th July via the local post office (as a gesture of support to the post office).

The cheque cleared the bank account on the 11th July.

However, on 8th August the agent got a Payment Reminder from HMRC dated 29th July (snail mail is clearly the communications method of choice for HMRC!) informing him that he was late with the payment.

The agent called the number on the letter and got through to a recorded message saying:

"This number is no longer in use. Call XXXX XXXXXX"

Going well so far isn't it?

Using the new number he was finally able to talk to a human being, who was very helpful. The response was clear and informative:

"There was probably a backlog in the dept that sees that the money is in the bank.

I can see that you have paid it.

Just ignore it."

As my correspondent ruefully points out:

"What a waste of frigging time and money, both for me and HMRC. And if this is repeated on a wide scale how much of taxpayers' cash is HMRC unnecessarily pi**ing up the wall?"

Would anyone care to estimate how much of our cash is being pissed up against the wall by HMRC?

Tax does have to be taxing.

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