Dedicated to the taxpayers of Britain, and the employees of His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), who have to endure the monumental shambles that is HMRC.
TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.
Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.
TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.
Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.
My sympathies to Glyn Moody, who had to endure a tedious time trying to prove to HMRC that he was who he said he was.
"On Monday, I called Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to give them some information they wanted from me. After being placed on hold for about 10 minutes, I finally got through, and was rightly “taken through security”. After all, it's vitally important that HMRC and similar organisations establish that the person they are talking to is indeed that person. Unfortunately, security had been “upgraded”, so you probably know what is coming next....
It turned out that “the system” no longer had “enough information” on me to verify my identity. This is despite the fact that I have been bunging money to the Inland Revenue for several decades, and have also interacted with Customs & Excise and other parts of the system now run by HMRC.
I certainly have records of these interactions going back many years. I could tell them precisely the amounts that I owed and paid them back in the 1980s and 1990s, for example. It seems surprising that they didn't also have this data in a form that they could access for verification purposes.
But no; the “system”, this wondrous updated beast, seemed to have mislaid all that wondrous information stuff, and so was unable to verify my identity. Which meant that through no fault of my own, I could not give the information the HMRC was demanding. It also meant that I would have to go in person to a physical HMRC office, taking with me the canonical two documents establishing my identity. That is, having wasted fully 40 minutes on an expensive 0845 number that I had the pleasure of paying for, I now had to waste a morning traipsing up to some inconveniently-located site.
Of course, when I went yesterday, it was raining. And, of course, when I got to this inconveniently-located HMRC office, thereby wasting the key time of my writing day, I was informed that this new, updated system was “down”, and they they didn't know when it would be coming “up”. And no, they couldn't just look at the two documents establishing my identity, and enter the info later because, well, you know, the “system was down”, which meant that everyone was reduced to a state of organisational de-cerebration.
And so I face the necessity of going back to this inconveniently-located office once again, when it will doubtless be raining once more, in the risible hope that this wonderful “updated” and so-called “system” might be vaguely running, but I'm not holding my breath.
This fiasco will join all the other disasters associated with the incompetent computer services of the HMRC and its forebears, including perhaps the most serious loss of personal data in world history (well, that we know about...). And yes, I do realise that it was probably because of that colossal failure that they have upgraded their security: but the point is good security lets people do things, rather than simply locking everyone out of the system."
Why not really indulge yourself, by doing all the things that Nanny really hates? Click on the relevant link to indulge yourselves; Food, Bonking, Gifts and Flowers, Groceries
My thanks to a loyal reader who has pointed me to the plans by HMRC to implement a "real time" PAYE system which, "theoretically", will ensure that when/if the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) introduce a Universal Credit system the DWP will have up-to-date information on everyone's income.
So far so good.
In order to aid HMRC introduce the system we, the taxpayers, have given HMRC £100M.
Spiffing!
I am sure that Ex Com and the relevant IT managers are fully capable of not wasting this money, and of introducing a system that will not go over budget and will work as expected.
Anyhoo, HMRC have issued a Consultation Document, responses to which have to be lodged by 28th February 2011.
One of the core changes which HMRC propose to make is to utilise the BACS system for reporting PAYE information. Currently payrolls can use either the internet or Electronic Data Transfer. These electronic channels were imposed on employers when HMRC introduced compulsory electronic filing of PAYE data.
However, HMRC now state that the change to BACS is necessary because:
"EDI does not link the payment instructions and information about deductions which is fundamental to the RTI (real time information) concept."
The BACS system (run by Vocalink) handles practically every financial transaction, debit card, credit card and inter bank funding transfer in the UK.
Now what does that tell you?
Think about it....
Yes, that's right, it has saturated the UK market and probably has little growth potential in the UK unless it finds a new market.
Vocalink is the main provider of payment services to the UK public sector. They handle 98% of state benefits and 95% of all salaries.
Thankfully for BACS, HMRC stepped in when they did!
Hoozah!
By the way, in addition to providing BACS with a new market and imposing costs on many companies by making them change to BACS, HMRC are also demanding details of employees bank accounts.
Why does it need this information?
Government snooping!
Quite unnecessary, unless HMRC has a legitimate reason to believe that fraud has occurred.
To summarise:
- HMRC intend to force payroll operators to switch their electronic communications capability to the BACS system, regardless of cost.
- HMRC intend to force every commercial payroll software developer to change the way in which his or her software operates, in order to comply with this chang.
- HMRC do not appear to have any procedure in place to compensate either payroll departments or payroll software providers for this change. Everyone just has to do it.
- HMRC have been given £100M of our money to pay for any changes to their computer systems.
- HMRC will, if this change goes ahead, have access to the bank account details of every employee in the UK. This is not in any way relevant to the correct calculation of Income Tax.
- BACS will gain a huge new market. It would also be interesting to know the terms of the contract with HMRC, wrt fees for data volume etc.
Tax does have to be taxing.
Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations
TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.
Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.
My thanks to a loyal reader who sent me a link to this parliamentary question and answer regarding unreconciled NI payments, dated 24 January 2011:
Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset, Conservative)
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many national insurance (NI) contributions deducted from pay and recorded on form P14 were not credited to NI accounts in each year since 5 April 2004; and what the monetary value is of the contributions yet to be credited.
David Gauke (Exchequer Secretary, HM Treasury; South West Hertfordshire, Conservative)
The number of unmatched P14s and the associated monetary values of the contributions received for the tax years requested are as follows:
Tax year P14s not matched Monetary value of contributions (£) 2004-05 1,839,143 263,101,931.24 2005-06 2,016,761 289,212,918.76 2006-07 1,974,081 278,618,228.99 2007-08 1,947,065 258,603,899.93 2008-09 1,542,773 194,623,653.05 2009-10 (1)- (1)-
(1) Figures not yet available.
The levels seems reasonably consistent. The next question Liddell-Grainger needs to ask is, how many and what value of these still remains unreconciled.
Tax does have to be taxing.
Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations
TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.
Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.
My thanks to a loyal reader who advises me that Dame Lesley Strathie has released a video on the HMRC intranet.
I am advised that during the 3 minute video the "Grande Dame" talks about 2010, and about how bad 2010 was (for her, or her staff and the taxpayers I wonder?).
I am also advised that there are quite a number of "erms" during the video.
I have tried to find a copy on the internet, but have so far failed.
Please, if anyone has a copy to hand, could they send it to me (or upload on YouTube and let us know the link)?
Thanks.
Tax does have to be taxing.
Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations
TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.
Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.
