The LGA Talks Bollocks

Last week the Local Government Association (LGA), for reasons best known to itself, decided to blow its own trumpet and have a go at HMRC's tax collection record.

The LGA said that uncollected tax was costing the equivalent of £1,370 for every household in England and Wales.

Cllr Sharon Taylor, chairwoman of the LGA's finance panel and Labour leader of Stevenage Borough Council in Hertfordshire, is quoted in the Huffington Post:

"If central government's collection rates were as good as those of councils, the public purse would be more than £20 billion better off.

That's almost double the size of the total spending cuts announced in the Chancellor's spending round. When the taxman's balance sheet falls short, it takes a toll on public services across the board.

Local government is the most efficient part of the public sector. Council tax has one of the highest collection rates of any tax. We cannot afford for local services like road maintenance, libraries and social care to continue paying the price of those who evade and avoid their tax liability. We all need government to do better in tackling this.

Local authorities collect council tax from more than 22 million homes. If councils can obtain more than 97% of this, it is reasonable that Whitehall should be able to match this.

Government has made positive noises on tackling unpaid tax. We now want to see a clear timetable which sets out how government will significantly improve their tax collection record."

Pass the sick bag someone!

Aside from the bizarre delusion that local government is the "most efficient part of the public sector", the comparison of council tax with tax collected by HMRC is absurd.

1 Council tax is straightforward to calculate, administer and collect.

2 Council's know where you live.

3 Tax collected by HMRC covers a veritable smorgasbord of income streams/types (eg salary, bonuses, capital gains, IHT etc etc); ie it is not always straightforward, easy to administer or calculate.

The LGA is talking complete and utter bollocks!

Tax does have to be taxing.

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Big Brother - HMRC's New Powers

The Register has a good article written by Amberhawk Training about new powers that will be granted to HMRC, if the Local Government Finance Bill now before Parliament is passed.

The bill, in its current form, permits the routine disclosure of tax records and other personal data held by HMRC to council officers for several council tax-related purposes.

The powers also allow HMRC to disclose such details directly to contractors of the council (eg, perhaps those IT service providers based overseas or in the cloud); this could permit tax details to go to many destinations outside the European Economic Area.

The argument used by the state is that these powers enable councils to get information directly from HMRC to check claims for reduced council tax, as opposed to having to ask for the same information again from the persons seeking the council tax reduction.

All very "helpful" and "considerate" of the state, maybe. However, there is already an exemption from the non-disclosure provisions in section 29 of the Data Protection Act that covers the “assessment or collection of any tax or duty...”; ie this data can be shared already.

The new bill will increase the data share between HMRC and councils and, as indicated above, spread that data to organisations outwith councils and the UK.

There is also one other rather interesting aspect of the proposed bill:

"There is a provision that states: “Regulations under this paragraph must not be made except with the consent of the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs”. This is the first time I have seen that the exercise of Ministerial Powers is to become subject to a veto by someone who is not the minister."

Is this a good idea to grant HMRC these extra powers?

I don't think so!

The state should be afraid of the people, the people should not be afraid of the state!


Tax does have to be taxing.

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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.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

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Customer Care

A few days ago I received this exasperated email from a taxpayer, who had valiantly tried to file online without 100% success.

I have edited out certain portions, so as to avoid him/her being identified, but have been given permission to publish it.

Please could someone advise as to the contact details of Linda Maslen?

Thanks.

"Two days ago I tried as a simple tax payer to fill in my return on-line for the first time this year. It should have been the simplest of returns with the minimum of entries, one for my private pension, one for my late wife's pension interest (very small) from three bank accounts and one entry for a charitable contribution.

I should add that I am far from being ignorant when it comes to computers as I worked in XXXXXX for most of my working life.

My first problem was that because I had ticked the box saying I was in receipt of a pension the form went on to ask me how much state pension and other benefits I was receiving.

Since it is zero in both cases I tried to enter zero, the system wouldn't accept zero and after a considerable time and a phone call to the HMRC helpline which remained unanswered after thirty minutes I resorted to my own devices and worked out that the only way round the problem was to enter £1.00 in the state pension and other benefit boxes, money I never received.

The next snag I hit was when it started asking me about unpaid tax in previous years, this time not only would it not accept zero, but it wouldn't accept £1.00 either so I was forced to redial the number of the HMRC help line.

After forty minutes my call was answered by a young lady from HMRC's call centre who was aggressive beyond belief - yes I may have been frustrated at this point but at no point was I rude or aggressive back, I even tried to calm her down, by telling her that my grandmother was born in the call centre's location, but to absolutely no avail.

I was expecting this young lady to talk me through the whole form to ensure that I was filling it in accurately since I was having such difficulty, but the only thing she was interested in was finding out what error messages I was receiving, she flatly ignored any other question relating to anything else on the form.

She did finally sort me out but only after a very unpleasant telephone conversation.

I have to say that I can't really blame her for her attitude since I dread to think the sort of angry people the poor girl has to deal with on a minute by minute basis.

My first point would be that this on-line tax return has not been properly evaluated and yet HMRC are pushing people into using it as the HMRC's preferred way of receiving tax returns.

My second point is regarding the intolerable delays in HMRC call centres answering calls and my third is the very unprofessional service I received when I did get through. On this latter point I don't blame call centre staff, but their managers who are failing to train them properly.

I subsequently went onto the internet and discovered the name of the HMRC director in charge of call centres. I eventually came up with the name Linda Maslen who is described as Director of Contact Services, but try as I might-and believe me I have spent hours trying-I couldn't locate an address or any other contact details for Linda Maslen.

So the bottom line on that one is that it appears to be impossible to contact HMRC's Director of CONTACT Services, mm.

I did discover however that some time back the HMRC call centre - I refuse to call it a service centre - was up for some kind of quality award a fact that Ms Maslen was more than happy to crow about in the various HMRC web sites where she is prominently featured.

It would appear to me that the highly paid executives of HMRC are more than happy to hide behind their lowly paid underlings who are sitting in the front line trenches taken a daily barrage of flak from disgruntled taxpayers while they sit quietly in their plush offices boasting about awards.

I wonder if Linda Maslen actually knows where the call centre is?

Please feel free to add this email to what I am sure is a growing pile of complaints that you are receiving about the lack of service from HMRC. I am at a loss as to what can be done about them so anything you can do to sort out the shambles that is HMRC will be more than welcome.

PS According to HMRC after I had submitted my tax return they owe me less than £2, I shan't hold my breath on expecting to receive it in the near future. In any case my confidence in HMRC's online return is so low that I doubt if this actually reflects a true record of my tax affairs for 2009-2010."

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

What is TAXWISE?

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.

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

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.

Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies

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"

Big Brother

There is something of a right old fracas brewing over the secret contract that gives government officials access to detailed records of 16 million houses and property sales. This contract is due to expire in March, and will be up for renewal.

The contract is between the government and Rightmove, the online property search firm, and it gives HMRC staff access to its records of transactions.

Needless to say these records contain details such as sale prices of properties, their internal features and any modifications that would enhance their value.

Why would HMRC be interested, or indeed need to know this this information?

Council tax!

The details gleaned by HMRC will be used by the government to increase council tax. This most hated and iniquitous tax is already being raised again this year by more than inflation. We can be certain that as the government becomes ever larger and more greedy, it will need to find further ways to fund its existence.

The contract between HMRC's Valuation Office Agency and Rightmove, states that Rightmove is bound by the Official Secrets Act and all its staff must sign a confidentiality agreement.

Rightmove keeps data on 16 million properties, and added 3.3 million records to its files in December.

Eric Pickles MP, the Tory shadow secretary of state for local government, said:

"The public will be alarmed that detailed information on 9 out of 10 house sales and rentals are secretly being passed from estate agents to tax spies without the public's knowledge or agreement. This is a shocking sign of the growing surveillance state under Gordon Brown."

The government claims that the contract was simply part of its efforts to keep records up to date.

They would say that wouldn't they?

The solution for the taxpayers of Britain is to boycott Rightmove. That will kill off this contract pdq.

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