Imagine mailing a letter to HMRC—His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, Britain’s tax enforcers—and being told it’ll take seven months for them to even read it. Sounds like a bad punchline, right? Except it’s not. This is straight from a jaw-dropping report in The Telegraph on January 29, 2025, by James Titcomb, exposing just how deep HMRC’s dysfunction runs. Seven months! I could master origami, watch every Sherlock episode twice, or lose all memory of why I bothered writing them—and they still wouldn’t have peeked at my envelope.
This isn’t some wild exaggeration; it’s the grim reality taxpayers are facing. According to The Telegraph, HMRC admitted it’ll take half a year just to read a letter—not process it, not reply, just give it a glance. Meanwhile, miss your tax deadline by a heartbeat, and they’ll slap you with fines quicker than you can blink. But when it’s their turn to move? They’re apparently too busy perfecting the art of procrastination to lift a finger.
Let’s break it down with the facts The Telegraph dug up. HMRC hauled in nearly £700 million in tax revenue last year—our money, mind you. Yet they can’t hire enough staff to open the mail before it’s practically an antique? The report says some taxpayers are waiting so long for refunds they’re dying before the cash arrives. Dead. Before a cheque clears. That’s not a glitch; that’s a scandal plucked straight from a dystopian novel, except it’s playing out in real life.
And if you think phoning them is any better, brace yourself. The Telegraph clocked an average wait time of 47 days to speak to someone. Forty-seven days! I could hitchhike to their office and camp out sooner—assuming they hadn’t shuttered most of their walk-in centres already. Their big fix? “Go online,” they say. Great advice, unless you’re Steve from Buckinghamshire, who told The Telegraph he spent months wrestling their glitchy website to no avail. Not everyone’s a digital wizard, and even if you are, why should you have to play tech support just to get what’s owed?
This isn’t some urban legend—it’s a documented mess. The Telegraph laid it bare: refunds stalled so long they’re posthumous, businesses choking on VAT delays, and people like me wondering if our letters are just landfill fodder. HMRC’s excuse? They’re “busy.” Busy with what? Counting our £700 million while we rot on hold? With that kind of revenue, they’ve got no business acting like they’re strapped for cash. This is apathy in a suit, and The Telegraph caught them red-handed.
The double standard is nauseating. They’ll chase you down like bounty hunters if you’re late, but when they owe you—or just owe you a shred of service—they’re suddenly moving at the speed of a glacier. The Telegraph didn’t make this up; it’s the lived nightmare of taxpayers across the UK. I’m not letting it slide. I want my letter read. I want my refund before I’m collecting a pension. And I want HMRC to stop treating us like annoyances they can ignore until we give up.
So, HMRC, here’s a wake-up call: do your damn job. Open the mail. Pick up the phone. Stop acting like seven months to read a letter—confirmed by The Telegraph as your actual policy—is remotely acceptable. Because this isn’t a rumour or a rant; it’s a disgrace, splashed across a national newspaper for all to see. If you can’t handle our £700 million better than this, maybe it’s time we find someone who can.
Tax does have to be taxing.
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It's a very different story when it's the other way around.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/income/hmrc-threatens-loan-charge-victims-debt-collectors-suicides/
Remember when there was a tax office in every town? Remember when calls were answered within 4 rings? Remember post being done in under 10 days? Now remember Osbourne imposing austerity and budget cuts to the public sector. Remember the glee from the right wing press when staff weren't replaced and pay didn't go up for those lazy civil servants? Now remember the closure of the local offices so now you can't meet anyone face to face but speak to someone on the end of the phone and likely never to be the same person twice. Still the press wrote articles about lazy civil servants never pointing out there was a third fewer staff and wages had flat lined so the bottom 2 grades the ones that do the bulk of the tasks now got minimum wage. Then COVID came and went and people WFH non of which was a problem when people were getting furlough payments. Now COVID has gone so let's blame WFH for the mess HMRC is in. It's never the years of underfunding or the deriding of staff making the experienced staff leave. No it's WFH or it's laziness. You reap what you sow.
ReplyDeleteYou forgot to mention those 'gold plated pensions' for the lazy civil servants that we're paid just over minimum wage and treated like shit.
DeleteSwept under the rug. Then they wonder why punters are getting double repayments. Feed bullshit in to the system, guess what, bullshit comes out.
ReplyDeleteHMRC Agents seemingly 'hang up' on unhappy punters when they can't take the enquiry further. Hardly putting the customer at the heart of everything we do is it?
Are they pressured to get the calls waiting down. Can't help? Slam the phone down!
https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/hmrc-rti-payroll-problems/