Tax Investigation Insurance

Tax does have to be taxing.

Tax Investigation Insurance

Market leading tax fee protection insurance for businesses, sole traders and individuals. Protect yourself from accountancy fees in the event of an HMRC enquiry.

Having a Solar Protect Tax Investigation Insurance policy at your disposal means that should you be one of the many 1000's of businesses or individuals that are selected by HMRC each year to look into your tax affairs your own accountant (your tax return agent) can get on and defend you robustly.

You have the peace of mind knowing that your accountant's (your tax return agent) fees will be paid by the insurance without any Excess for you to find.

Tax Investigation Insurance is an insurance policy that will fully reimburse your accountant's (your tax return agent) fees up to £100,000 if you are subject to enquiry by or dispute with HMRC.

A Solar Protect policy will enable your accountant (your tax return agent) to:

• Deal with any correspondence from HMRC
• Attend any meeting with HMRC
• Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal
• Having the security of knowing that fees will be met in full will enable your Accountant (your tax return agent) to defend your position robustly

Please click here for details.

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"

Tax Investigation Insurance - Taxwise

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX & 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. The Policy has been designed to combat the costs and inequities of undergoing the ever-increasing number of HM Revenue & Customs random investigations.

Taxwise Coverage

The standard cover provides representation costs by registered accounting practices on your behalf, for up to £75,000 in any one claim, arising from:

-Income Tax Self Assessment full enquiries
-Income Tax Self Assessment aspect enquiries (if this option is selected)
-Corporation Tax Self Assessment full enquiries
-Corporation Tax Self Assessment aspect enquiries (if this option is selected)
-H M Revenue & Customs VAT disputes
-Employer compliance disputes PAYE/ P11D/ NIC
-IR35 disputes
-Now covers business's with an annual turnover of up to £10 million

To find out more, please use this link Taxwise

Tax does have to be taxing.

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"

IT Upgrade

Director of Finance writes that HMRC will be implementing a much needed major IT upgrade, which will create one single record of an individual's PAYE pay and tax and National Insurance details.

There will be a temporary period of planned service interruption from 12 June 2009.

Fingers crossed it goes according to plan, as all IT upgrades (in both the private and public sectors) always do.

Tax does have to be taxing.

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"

Myners - The Irony

I am amused to see that Lord Myners, in an earlier life, had no qualms about helping to set up Aspen Insurance Holdings in Bermuda. Aspen being an offshore company (of which he became part time chairman) that, owing to its structure, avoided over £100M a year in tax.

His five year term as chairman of both the UK and Bermuda arms of Aspen ended in May 2007, he then became a minister in October 2008.

As we all know, tax avoidance is perfectly legal.

Isn't it therefore ironic that Myners is now the minister charged with clamping down on tax avoidance and tax havens?

Tax does have to be taxing.

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"

Time To Pay

Stephen Timms, financial secretary to the Treasury, has said that over 60,000 businesses have agreed time to pay tax arrangements with HMRC totalling more than £1BN.

Firms must pay interest on the outstanding amount. However, they can avoid extra penalty charges. Late payments for income tax, national insurance contributions and capital gains tax are charged at 3.5%, corporation tax is charged at at 2.5%.

The average deferral time is between three to six months.

These arrangements are of some benefit to small firms in particular, who are experiencing difficulties obtaining credit during the current recession/depression.

Let us trust that as and when HMRC outsource its debt collection activities and sell on its outstanding debt to private debt collection agencies, these private agencies are equally forgiving of the delays in settling the debts.

Tax does have to be taxing.

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"

New CIO Sought

HMRC is advertising for a new Chief Information Officer (CIO), at £180,000 per annum.

The CIO will be responsible for 1,400 staff, and a budget of £1BN. The successful applicant will oversee the overhaul of HMRC's IT systems and security, and rationalise HMRC's 650 computer systems that cover Paye, National Insurance, child benefit and tax credits etc.

The CIO will also oversee the £2.8BN Aspire (Acquiring Strategic Partners for the Inland Revenue) IT services contract with Capgemini.

Good luck to whoever wins the role.

Is £180K enough for such a Herculean task?

Tax does have to be taxing.

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"

Rewarding Failure - Bonus Season at HMRC

Oh the joys of the bonus season, when you are rewarded for your success and for meeting your KPI's.

Well that's the theory.

However, in reality there are some organisations that are more than happy to reward failure.

Aside from our "respected" financial institutions that mis-sell insurance, endowments, pensions, loans, sub prime debt etc there is another organ that is happy to reward failure.

Can you guess which one that is?

Yes, that's right, our old chums at HMRC.

Those running the organ of the state that lost 25 million data records, leaves months of post unopened and has screwed up the tax credit system have still been given bonuses.

The Treasury has paid out £3.1M to top civil servants and £19M to staff at HMRC.

The rewards have been agreed by the Cabinet Office, as part of a package to encourage the most senior civil servants to meet government targets set by the Treasury.

Well done lads!

Well deserved!

Tax does have to be taxing.

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"

Judge, Jury and Executioner

I am amused to see that the people running HMRC are fans of Judge Dredd; where Dredd is judge, jury and executioner.

It certainly seems that HMRC have taken this fantasy story as being a fact based model, on which to base their new modus operandi.

Under new penalty provisions, HMRC will set the level of fines for tax offenders and also decide the degree of fault.

That's nice!

I assume that it will help cut down on all that time wasting bureaucracy, whereby a third party would have to become involved in assessing guilt and determining the level of fine (if appropriate).

The new provisions (published on 1st of April - no joke!) will result in a penalty of up to

-30% of the tax due if the error is "careless";
-a penalty of up to 70% of the tax due if the error is "deliberate";
-and a penalty of up to 100% of the tax due if the error is "deliberate and the customer conceals it".

The new penalties will initially apply to errors on returns and documents for income tax, VAT, PAYE, national insurance, capital gains tax, corporation tax and the construction industry scheme.

They will kick in on return periods starting on or after 1 April 2008.

The sting in the tail with the new penalties is not just the level of penalty, but also the fact that HMRC will decide the degree of fault.

HMRC state that their benchmark of "reasonable care", when determining the seriousness of the "error", will vary according to the person involved, their circumstances and their abilities.

Somewhat subjective, don't you think?

Don't worry though; HMRC, like the Pope, is infallible (in its mind anyway).



Tax does have to be taxing.

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's Wonky Databases

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has been having some problems with its databases.

No, I don't mean that embarrassing "little" incident last year when it lost the data records of 25M people.

Seemingly it has incorrectly taxed up to five million UK citizens.

A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that up to £880M in pay as you earn (Paye) taxes had not been collected each year, while other taxpayers had overpaid by up to £340M.

The NAO said in its report that IT systems were "not well suited to the efficient administration of income tax where people have more than one job or change jobs on a regular basis".

It added:

"These difficulties have been compounded by inconsistent working practices within the department as a consequence of staff not being aware of or failing to follow departmental procedures."

The NAO said problems stemmed from tax records being structured around jobs, rather than around taxpayers.

HMRC have admitted that its Paye systems have difficulty coping with people who have more than job. However, it has promised to fix the problem.

So that's alright then?

Errrmmmm...maybe not.

For you see, the solution that HMRC intend to implement is to move its processing from its 12 regional databases onto one single national database during 2008-09.

An HMRC spokesman said:

"This will bring together separate employments into a single customer record to create a single view of employees' tax affairs.

Our staff will have access to all of an employee's pay, tax, national insurance and pension information which will be all in one place. This will make our Paye processing quicker and more accurate."

A noble idea.

However, given their previous problems wrt merging/rationalising departments and the complete inability of any government orifice to handle IT issues in a professional and successful manner, does anyone seriously believe that the merging of 12 regional databases will work?

I guarnatee more records will be lost and muddled up during 2008/09.

Tax does have to be taxing.

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com) is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Cry Freedom

In theory, we live in a transparent democracy where information about the activities of the state and its organs should be relatively easy to access. Indeed, the Freedom of Information Act is meant to improve that transparency.

Not so it seems over at HMRC.

On the HMRC site you can view an online version of the National Insurance Manual.

Excellent!

Here is a link to the page about NI Fraud.

Can you spot the "slight" problem here?

Good isn't it?

Poor old HMRC really haven't grasped this "freedom" thing, have they?

Seemingly HMRC do not believe in freedom of information, HMRC believe that information should only be disseminated on a need to know basis.

Tax does have to be taxing.

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com) is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Fuckwits

As Oscar Wilde once wrote, almost:

"To lose one set of discs is careless, to lose seven is downright fuckwitted!"

It beggars belief, but the fuckwits in HMRC have announced that yet another set of data has in fact been lost.

This time the "professionals" in Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs have admitted losing the personal details of over 6,500 people claiming pensions.

The details were lost at an office of HMRC in Cardiff, after a data cartridge went missing in September. The cartridge had been sent to the Cardiff office by Countrywide Assured, a life assurance and pensions company.

Details on the cartridge included names, addresses, national insurance numbers and pension contributions, according to Graham Kettleborough, chief executive officer of Chesnara, the parent company of Countrywide Assured.

The cartridge was signed for when it reached the office, but was subsequently mislaid. However, the spokesperson insisted that, because the information on the data cartridge can only be accessed by a mainframe computer, the risk to the individuals involved is "very low".

Oh, so that's alright then!

These fuckwits have no idea what the hell they are doing.

Why have then not been fined and sent to trial for negligence?

HMRC said in a statement on Tuesday:

"We are taking this loss extremely seriously and have done everything possible to locate the data cartridge. We would like to apologise to all those affected."

As I have said before, a class action should be taken out against HMRC by all those who have had their personal security compromised by HMRC's negligence.

www.hmrcisshite.com is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Heads in The Sand

Much like ostriches with their heads in the sand, the people "in charge" of HMRC are refusing to learn the lessons of the recent shambolic loss of data and are still using the post to transfer people's personal details.

The Telegraph reports that details of 9 million people's investments (worth £60BN) are being sent insecurely through the post, because HMRC requires these discs to be unencrypted.

HMRC requires fund managers to submit details every year of all investors' names, addresses, dates of birth, National Insurance numbers and the amount each individual has invested in Isas and Peps.

So far so good.

However, HMRC stipulates that this data must be delivered in an unencrypted extended binary coded decimal interchange code (EBCDIC), or American standard code for information interchange (ASCII) text format.

Why does HMRC make such a stipulation?

Richard Saunders, chief executive of the Investment Management Association (IMA), believes that he has the answer:

"I assume this is because HMRC does not have systems to cope with this information in encrypted form and it may cost more for it to have systems that cope with secure data."

Mr Saunders has written to David Hartnett, chairman of HMRC, asking for this practice to be stopped. He awaits a response.

A spokesman for HMRC said:

"Sorry, we are not commenting as this falls under the terms of reference of the Poynter review."

So that's alright then!

They just don't get this security issue do they?

www.hmrcisshite.com is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

What a Shambles!

Poor old HMRC, they really can't quite get the hang of addressing an envelope properly.

I guess what with the strain of losing data discs on a regular basis, they can't quite focus their minds on more mundane activities such as envelope addressing.

The Oxford mail reports that the good old boys in HMRC sent Ron Leaver and Tracey Giles a number of letters over a period of months.

So far so good.

Unfortunately, the letters contained child benefit and national insurance numbers meant for other people.

Mr Leaver, from Merton near Bicester, received over a dozen letters that were in fact meant to go to Buckinghamshire County Council.

The letters contained a veritable smorgasbord of names and NI numbers of former council employees, one even contained a cheque for £2,000.

HMRC had managed to delude themselves that the local authority, whose headquarters are in Aylesbury, was in fact based 18 miles away at a private house in a small Oxfordshire village.

Mr Leaver needless to say did point out the mistake to the ever alert HMRC, yet HMRC continued to send him the letters.

He is quoted in the Oxford Mail:

"I'm disgusted with the situation. No one has been able to tell me why they did this.

If it's happening to me is it happening to other people?

It's an absolute shambles."

Needless to say if it happens to one person, as sure as eggs are eggs, it will happen to another. Tracey Giles, from Hempton, found this out for herself. She was sent a letter meant for a Tracey Mason.

The letter was an apology for losing the data discs, and of course contained the NI and child benefit numbers of the intended recipient.

Ms Giles is now worried, not unreasonably, that someone else has her details thanks to the mind numbing incompetence of HMRC.

An HMRC spokesman said:

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused. We are currently writing to over seven million child benefit claimants. Letters are still being sent, so people shouldn't worry if they haven't yet received an apology."

Here is a free piece of advice to HMRC, the sending of the apology letters (as pointed out earlier on this site) is a major security blunder. Given that all of the letters have not yet been sent, HMRC should stop sending any more now.

Now that they have been publicly told that the apology letters represent a major security risk, not to stop sending them is criminally negligent.

www.hmrcisshite.com is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Fuckwits

Congratulations to the HMRC for proving that despite things being farking awful last week, it is more than capable of making things worse.

In a rush to cover backsides, and to look contrite, HMRC sent millions of apology letters to those who had their personal details placed at risk as a result of the HMRC disc blunder.

Unfortunately this act of contrition exposed the hapless victims of HMRC incompetence to even greater risk of fraud and id theft:

• The postal system is notoriously open to abuse and theft (over a million letters are lost everyday)



• The apology letters contained the details on the missing discs. Thereby giving the criminals another bite of the apple



• The letters which contain names, National Insurance and child benefit numbers are being delivered to the last known addresses of the recipients.
  
  It doesn't take a genius to realise that some of the millions of people sent these letters may have moved (1 in 10 people move each year). Therefore many of the letters containing these private details are being delivered to the wrong people.
  
  Oh, but that's alright, HMRC are blaming the taxpayers who have moved for not keeping HMRC up to date with their moves

Hardly a stellar performance from the HMRC.

Have the people in HMRC never been trained in the basics of security, fraud and id theft prevention?

Needless to say this latest screw up has brought more problems down on the heads of those claiming to run the HMRC. The Information Commissioner will now investigate this latest security lapse.

The Information Commissioner is now pursuing three inquiries into breaches of confidentiality by HMRC.

It would seem that the people running HMRC, and indeed the government itself, has little clue about the concept of security and id theft; this is the same government that wants to impose a national id card scheme on an unwilling population.

Those who don't receive a letter of apology are being asked to ring an HMRC helpline.

Congratulations to the HMRC for making matters worse and exposing 25 million people to the threat of fraud and id theft twice in two weeks, a double whammy.

Fuckwits!

www.hmrcisshite.com is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Government Under Fire for HMRC Data Fiasco

Ministers are facing demands for answers after 25 million people's personal details were lost in Britain's worst ever data protection breach.

The "catastrophic" blunder by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) means nearly half the UK's population - including leading politicians and businessmen - are at risk of identity fraud.

Chancellor Alistair Darling revealed the staggering scale of the debacle in an emergency statement to MPs, as Paul Gray, the head of HMRC, fell on his sword.

Two compact discs containing names, addresses, dates of birth, child benefit numbers, national insurance numbers and bank or building society account details of some 25 million individuals and 7.25 million families have gone missing.

The Commons emitted a collective gasp as Mr Darling explained how a junior official sent the entire child benefit database from the HMRC HQ in Newcastle to the National Audit Office in London on October 18.

In flagrant breach of the agency's procedure, the package was not even posted recorded delivery through contracted courier TNT, and never arrived at its destination.

However, senior management at HMRC were not informed of the problem until November 8, with Mr Darling and Prime Minister Gordon Brown finally brought into the loop two days later.

The officials involved apparently waited to raise the alarm because they hoped the password-protected discs would "turn up".

The Metropolitan Police is now leading the hunt for the package, while Mr Darling has ordered a probe into security procedures at HMRC and the Independent Police Complaints Commission is also investigating.

The Chancellor stressed there was no evidence that the information had fallen into criminal hands and said the public would be protected against any fraud by the Banking Code.

Source The Guardian

The Litany of Disasters

Revenue & Customs has a long litany of disasters to confess, ranging from lost laptops to the tax credit 'nightmare':

October 2007

A laptop containing data on up to 2,000 people with investment ISAs is stolen. In Parliamentary answers Ministers reveal that 41 laptops were stolen from HMRC in the past 12 months

September 2007

A CD containing names, national insurance numbers, dates of birth and pension data of about 15,000 Standard Life customers goes missing. The data was lost en route from the Revenue office in Newcastle to the company's headquarters in Edinburgh

August 2007

Businesses registering for VAT for the first time face unprecedented delays because of the Government’s attempts to crack down on carousel frauds and cut costs. In extreme cases, businesses have had to wait more than six months for their VAT registration

May 2007

HMRC forced to extend the self-assessment filing deadline to 28 May and mitigate penalties for late filing, after tax agents complain that the online serivce is so slow that the only way to file a return is at 4am or weekends

May 2007

Parliamentary Accounts Committee reports again on the tax credit system. Committee says £5.8 billion was overpaid to claimants in the first three years of the current tax credits scheme, due to administrative errors by HMRC

February 2007

HMRC comes under fire for offering tax inspectors bonuses of up to £2,000 to encourage them to collect 25 per cent more tax during 2007

December 2006

A National Audit Office report indicates that 5.7 million taxpayers may not be paying the right amount of tax because they are using the wrong tax code. HMRC estimates are that taxpayers have overpaid around £500 million via PAYE, and that £1 billion of tax may have been underpaid

January 2006

HMRC apologises to 10,000 firms after fining them at least £400 each by mistake because of a basic flaw in the design of automatic systems that issue penalty notices

September 2005

The Public Accounts Committee denounces the tax credit system as a "nightmare". MPs say tax credits have been routinely overpaid to 1.8 million claimants and claims the system may be fatally undermined by its complexity. Follows reports from the Ombudsman and complaints from Citizens Advice.

May 2002

Ten months after its launch, the Inland Revenue's self-assessment online tax returns service suffers a major security breach when taxpayers filing their tax return online were able to view each others' personal information.

Source The Times