HMRC's RTI Not Fit For Purpose Clusterfuck!

My thanks to Elaine Clark for pointing me to an article in the Telegraph about leaked emails from HMRC, that indicate 5 million taxpayers may have had their tax bills incorrectly calculated last year.

HMRC has privately admitted, to itself I assume, that those who underpaid or overpaid income tax last year may still have paid the wrong amount.

Aside from already having been sent new demands or repayments, it seems that the hapless 5 million now face the prospect of having their tax bills recalculated one again.

HMRC has stopped sending repayments until the crisis is resolved, a very neat way of improving its short term cashflow!

Elaine Clark of the Cheapaccounting tax practice is quoted:

"This is extraordinary, a disaster, and heads need to roll at HMRC."

HMRC it currently has no idea about the scale of problem.

The recipients of HMRC's leaked email were advised to tell taxpayers who questioned their bills "not to repay any underpayment" of tax, and those who overpaid tax should not cash any cheques they had received.

Ladies and gentlemen there is only one word that can describe this:

CLUSTERFUCK!

One of the whislteblowers who leaked the email said:

"HMRC refuses to admit the system doesn't work, and it's scandalous that there is no politician holding them to account as the whole programme of welfare reform could be put at risk because of this.

The system is not fit for purpose, it's inherently flawed and routinely produces errors that cause a huge mess for families and employers."

In the leaked email, HMRC admitted that duplicate entries for workers was a major factor behind its latest errors. It also blamed employers for failing to provide the correct salary information in submissions about staff.

"We are urgently investigating these cases and will look to resolve the matter in the next six to eight weeks. 

We currently do not know the scale of the issue but some large employers are involved, so several thousand of employees may be affected."

Elaine Clark said that taxpayers were being forced to wait more than half an hour to get through to HMRC to discuss tax demands. She said many then faced months in limbo before letters arrived, which might now be incorrect.

"The Revenue's flagship new reporting system was supposed to fix these types of problem but it appears to have failed completely.

The pressure put on individuals who face demands for tax is enormous, so it's extraordinary that HMRC should again have made such basic errors."

Is anyone surprised by this?

I doubt it, based on the comment made by a loyal reader yesterday, about HMRC's new death rules, everyone knows the system is fucked up, but no one has the balls to admit it to their political masters:

"As far as I know, no-one actually working on the front line in Personal Tax was asked about this change - the first we knew was when the big announcement about it was made to us a few weeks ago.

We know that this is going to be another balls-up. Even if the RTI data could be relied upon (and it can't - tens of thousands of people have recently had tax calculations for last year which are way out because either their employers or pension companies have supplied the wrong data, or the system has failed to handle it properly), then what about non-PAYE income which doesn't fall into Self Assessment, like savings interest or dividends? 

 

Not taken account of at all as far as we can see. The bereaved are likely to be ripped off all over the place through this. 

 

And why? 

 

So that Excom can cut more front-line staff, save their OBE's and go to the next prayer meeting?"

It was but a short time ago that Homer and her cronies were receiving the blessing of God for their "successes".

 

Where's God now Homer, when you need him/her?

 

Oh wait, he retired some years ago!

Sadly heads won't roll, Homer will simply be promoted to her next level of incompetence and doubtless will be made a Dame. Such a career of incompetence, how does she sleep at night?

Now is the time for the taxpayers to learn the real truth about how bad things are in HMRC. Step forward and tell it how it is!

Tax does have to be taxing.

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