As per HMRC
"Our helplines are currently closed due to a technical issue, which we're urgently working to resolve. We apologise to customers and advise them to try calling us later. Our digital services remain available."
HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
Morning, you hardworking mugs still waiting for that refund or trying to get through to an adviser without losing the plot. While HMRC's own staff rack up half a million sick days and Fujitsu finally gets the boot, the taxman has found time to bombard over 300,000 ordinary workers and pensioners with what can only be described as "trivial" tax demands – tiny little bills for peanuts that probably cost more to send than they're worth.
Fresh FOI figures for the 2023-24 tax year reveal a record 1.32 million simple assessments – double the average of the previous six years. Of those, a whopping 317,000 were for £100 or less, and nearly half (647,000, or 49%) demanded £300 or less. That's right: HMRC is spending your money printing, posting, and chasing brown envelopes for amounts that wouldn't cover a decent night out or a tank of petrol these days.
These "simple" assessments are meant to spare people the horror of full self-assessment – fair enough if it's straightforward. But when you're hitting pensioners who've never considered themselves "taxpayers" before, just because a frozen personal allowance (£12,570, stuck since 2021 and now extended to 2031) plus a rising state pension tips them over by a few quid? That's not simplification; that's bureaucratic bullying.
The rise is pure fiscal drag – thresholds frozen while everything else creeps up – pulling more folk into the net by stealth. Experts like Ian Futcher from Quilter call it exactly that: a steady creep that's now forcing HMRC to administer "nothing more than £100" while piling shock and hassle on recipients who thought their tax was sorted.
And the cherry on top? Former pensions minister Steve Webb (now at LCP) points out that in some cases, the cost of collecting these trivial sums probably exceeds what they raise. Yet HMRC's boss has defended using debt collectors for as little as £89. Brilliant priorities: hound grannies for a tenner while the phone lines stay jammed and refunds take years.
Rachel Reeves promised in her Budget that from April 2027, pure state pensioners won't get chased for "small amounts" via simple assessments. How generous – after years of this nonsense. Meanwhile, savers, workers with a bit of interest, or anyone else caught in the drag keep getting the brown envelope treatment. And good luck querying it when the hold music is longer than a tax year.
This is peak HMRC: obsessed with squeezing every last penny from the little people, no matter how inefficient, while the big systemic cock-ups (Horizon anyone?) drag on forever.
Tax does have to be taxing.
But wasting resources on trivia while ignoring real incompetence? That's just taking the mickey.
Amazon "Brown Envelope Survival Kit" Suggestions
Morning, you lot still battling HMRC's helpline hell while the bigwigs play fast and loose with the rules. Spare a thought for the ordinary punter getting hammered for a late filing, because up in the gilded corridors of power, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has just been caught short-changing the taxman by a cool £40,000 on her swanky £800k seaside flat in Hove.
That's right – our Angela, the firebrand who spent years railing against Tory tax dodgers and calling positions "untenable" when the likes of Nadhim Zahawi got tangled with HMRC, has now got the Revenue sniffing around her own affairs. She bought the three-bed pad back in May 2025, paying a measly £30k in stamp duty by claiming it was her only gaff. But thanks to some fancy footwork with a family trust (set up for her disabled son, fair play on that front), complex "deeming provisions" meant she still counted as owning the old place. Result? She should have coughed up the higher second-home rate – £70k total.
Blames "inaccurate legal advice" from conveyancers who insist they never gave tax advice at all. Used HMRC's own online calculator, apparently. Sound familiar? It's the same shambolic system that spits out wrong answers for the rest of us, but when you're a minister, suddenly it's everyone else's fault.
Now HMRC's launched a proper probe – looking at whether it was "careless" (code for penalty time, potentially another £8k-£40k on top) or worse. Interest already ticking up at punishing rates. And this from the woman whose government is eyeing even higher property taxes while preaching about "closing the tax gap".
Hypocrisy on stilts. If this was a Tory, she'd be leading the baying pack. Instead, she's referring herself to the ethics watchdog, promising to pay up, and hoping it all blows over. Meanwhile, you and I get penalties for honest mistakes because we can't afford "expert counsel".
Tax does have to be taxing.
But for the elite, it seems optional until the spotlight hits.
Amazon "Cheer Yourself Up After Yet Another Politician Tax Scandal" Suggestions
(affiliate links – because retail therapy is the only therapy we plebs get)
HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
One address and 85,000 companies: Welcome to Shelton Street!
As per The Times according to Companies House, just over 22,000 new companies were incorporated at 71-75 Shelton Street last year: an average of almost 90 companies for each working day.
On the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) list of named tax avoidance schemes, promoters, enablers and suppliers, many of the 246 companies named are, or were, registered at one of the three mass registration addresses. Seventeen firms are tied to 71-75 Shelton Street.
Dan Neidle, the founder of Tax Policy Associates, a think tank, set up a fraud-finding tool this year designed to help uncover suspicious UK companies. Searching by address, mass registration addresses generate a high number of hits. At 71-75 Shelton Street, for example, there are 40 results.
HMRC need to take a look at this place!
HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
Morning, you tax-weary warriors. After what feels like an eternity of watching HMRC throw good money after bad into the black hole that is Fujitsu, the penny has finally dropped. Or rather, the contract has been ripped up.
The troubled Japanese IT behemoth – the very same outfit whose Horizon system wrongfully convicted hundreds of sub-postmasters and turned their lives into living nightmares – has been unceremoniously replaced by Danish firm Netcompany on HMRC’s vital Trading Service platform. That’s right: the system that handles the bulk of our import/export declarations, VAT on goods moving in and out, and a chunk of the customs revenue that keeps the lights on in Whitehall.
Fujitsu’s contract? Terminated. Netcompany steps in from 2026, with the transition already under way. HMRC says it’s part of a “strategic shift” to modernise and “reduce reliance on single suppliers”. Translation: “We’ve finally realised that sticking with a company whose software ruined thousands of innocent lives might not be the best look, especially when the Public Accounts Committee keeps asking awkward questions.”
Let’s be brutally honest: Fujitsu should have been shown the door years ago. The Horizon scandal alone – where faulty software led to prosecutions, bankruptcies, suicides, and a £1.3 billion compensation bill (so far) – should have been enough to blacklist them from any government contract. But no. HMRC kept the cheques rolling, pouring hundreds of millions into Fujitsu’s pockets while the rest of us dealt with glitchy online services and endless helpline holds.
This isn’t just a technical switch; it’s a long-overdue admission that outsourcing critical tax and customs systems to a firm with that track record was, frankly, insane. And the timing? Delicious. With the Post Office Horizon Inquiry still exposing fresh horrors almost weekly, HMRC quietly slipping Fujitsu out the back door is about as subtle as a bailiff at dawn.
Netcompany, for what it’s worth, comes with a cleaner slate and a reputation for delivering digital services on time and on budget (in Denmark, at least). Whether they can untangle the spaghetti of HMRC’s legacy systems remains to be seen, but at least they’re not carrying the baggage of wrongful convictions and cover-ups.
So, farewell Fujitsu – don’t let the door hit you on the way out. And good riddance to one of the most expensive, scandal-ridden outsourcing relationships in British public sector history.
Tax does have to be taxing.
But paying a fortune to a company that helped destroy lives? That’s just taking the piss.
Amazon “Celebrate the Fujitsu Exit” Suggestions
(affiliate links – because every small victory deserves a treat)
HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
