Homer Places HMRC Above The Law

The Treasury Select Committee has warned that it continues to have "considerable concern" about proposals for HMRC to be allowed to deduct money directly from tax debtors' bank accounts.

Unsurprisingly Lin Homer continues to deny that there is a problem with this proposal, and told the committee that it doesn't breach Magna Carta protections for the individual against the state.

In addition to wanting to raid bank accounts of recalcitrant tax debtors, Homer and her gang want to access bank statements going back 12 months and to freeze the accounts of those HMRC deem to be recalcitrant for 14 days whilst HMRC "check spending patterns".

Now you and I might point out to Homer and her gang that there are already laws at HMRC's disposal, that enable it to recoup money from the recalcitrant. The problem, from Homer's perspective, is that these laws require HMRC to prove (via the courts) that it has a right to extract monies owed.

In Homer's view the courts are simply too slow and expensive; ie she wants HMRC to be placed above the law!

The committee takes a dim view of Homer's desire to ride roughshod over the law, and has already warned in a recent report that the new powers would be "wholly unacceptable" without a requirement for independent approval from a court, ombudsman or tribunal before money was taken.

Homer was having none of that, she is quoted by the Guardian:

"I believe that for the taxpayer as a whole, it is right that we have sufficient powers to stop these limited numbers of people avoiding paying tax.

We are talking about 17,000 people who don't dispute the tax is due, they just don't pay. We will have written to them, we will have engaged with them and they just fold their arms and wait for us to take some other action.

Of course, we can go to court, but the cost both in time and money of going to court will often outweigh or seriously diminish the amount of tax collected. In these cases, we believe with proper safeguards... this is a fairer way of extracting the tax everybody is due to pay."

The Liberal Democrat committee member John Thurso said that HMRC was trying to become judge, jury and executioner and to remove legal protections from those who it believes owe tax, simply because it was slow and expensive to follow the legal processes.

All of this, if Homer's wish is granted, for a poxy £375M over four years!

Ironically, when quizzed about whether HMRC would pay compensation when (not "if") it made a mistake Homer said it would be up the courts to decide the amount. These being the same courts that she doesn't want to use when raiding people's bank accounts!

To grant Homer and her chums in HMRC these powers would be madness in the extreme!

Tax does have to be taxing.

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Homer Apologises

Lin Homer apologises to Treasury Committee for #HMRC error in calculating targets | Economia
— economia (@economiamag) July 8, 2014

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance 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 Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



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 12,500 Erroneous Penalty Letters

It seems that HMRC's flagship RTI continues to be riddled with bugs and errors.

AccountingWeb reports that HMRC has sent about 12,500 penalty letters in error to employers who had filed their payroll returns for 2013 to 2014.

HMRC have stated that nearly 10% of penalty letters sent were to employers who had filed their PAYE information for the tax year ending 5 April 2014 because its computer system didn’t recognise returns had been submitted in four situations:

• A month 12 Full Payment Summary with zero financial values, declaring final submission for the year
• A month 12 Employer Payment Summary (EPS) with zero financial values, whether or not declaring final submission for the year
• A month 12 EPS claiming CIS deductions suffered
• An “Earlier Year Update” with zero financial values

HMRC have apologised for the inconvenience caused by the penalty notices sent in error.

Sadly this form of foul up does seem to be par for the course, in May I noted that 49% of automatic late VAT submission fines were incorrect.

Coincidently in 2012 HMRC sent out around 12,000 erroneous penalty notices to people told by HMRC that they didn't need to file a self assessment form (admittedly this was not an RTI issue, but placing trust in HMRC's automated systems to send out automatic fines does appear to be misplaced).

Luckily HMRC can't take money from bank accounts, yet!

Anyhoo the fix, to resolve this problem, will seemingly be implemented by the end of August. 

HMRC state:

“We are also updating all the employer records involved, and no further action is needed by employers."

Has anyone received one of these erroneous penalty letters?

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance 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 Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



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"

FCO's Fruitless Payment To HMRC

On Friday I wrote that the SFO had been fined by HMRC because of non payment of VAT liabilities.

It seems that the SFO isn't the only government department that has a little trouble understanding the tax system, and paying its "fair share" (to use the meaningless phrase that the politicians have grown fond of over the last few months). Step forward the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which has been charged £820,522 in interest by HMRC for a £15M unpaid tax bill.

The Telegraph reports that the bill arose because of a dispute between HMRC and the FCO over the status of locals employed by British embassies overseas.

Under HMRC rules, crown servants are subject to UK taxes, wherever they are employed in the world, in addition to the local taxes. The only exemption is in countries where a double taxation treaty is in place.

The FCO usually pays the UK tax on behalf of its employees. However, a backlog of unpaid taxes dating back to 2008 has left it with a large interest bill, which was paid this year.

The liability relates to around 500 locally engaged employees, who are often junior and support staff in non-diplomatic roles, in 80 countries.

The interest charge is rather amusingly recorded as a “fruitless payment” in the annual accounts, “arising on the late payment of income tax over a number of years by the FCO in respect of certain members of our locally engaged staff in countries not covered by a double taxation treaty".

The Foreign Office stressed there was no overall loss to the taxpayer, with the money moving from one public body to another.

Well that's all very well, maybe, in the eyes of the civil service. However, in reality as I noted on Friday:

The net result to the taxpayer?

A loss, given that this has cost time, money and resources to resolve!

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance 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 Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



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"

Irony - SFO Fined by HMRC

 

The Serious Fraud Office has had to pay more than £4M to HMRC after wrongly reclaiming value added tax on fees paid to barristers and other contractors.

 

The FT states that the SFO had to pay HMRC a fine of £564,000, and make an underlying tax repayment of £3.8M plus interest.

Ironically the SFO had to request £19M in emergency funding from the Treasury in part to help cover the tax fine.

One government department paying another government department a fine, using taxpayers' money.

The net result to the taxpayer?

A loss, given that this has cost time, money and resources to resolve!

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance 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 Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



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"

The Charmed Circle

My thanks to a loyal reader for posting the following comment yesterday:

"Perhaps the sheeple will begin to understand why a Labour Research Department stress survey report recently showed HMRC and the DfT experience stress levels way above average?

I find it remarkable that no-one appears to have joined the dots wrt this terrible fact...

07/12/2010 Sir Gus O'D appointed a certain Links Homer as CEO at the DfT...

Coincidence, conspiracy fact, inconvenience, mistake, fate, promotion, revolving doors again?

Call it what you like but who is the current CEO of HMRC appointed some 2 years later by the same Sir Gus O'D?

Can't believe PCS failed so badly to seize this opportunity for some publicity, but then what can you expect?

What about you Ken, believe in coincidence or is it Karma?

Time for the smoke and mirrors to be replaced by reality, stress costs money, taxpayers money, which in these austere times is earned harder than ever.

Why the heck the oppressed staff are not banging on their M.P.'s doors I do not know, or is there a moratorium over HMRC because of any pending privatisation or part-privatisation of the tax system?

Who knows?
Who cares?
Why worry?"

I would observe that the civil service, much like the City, works on a principle of "a charmed circle"; wherein it's not what you know, but who you know. Hence revolving doors are favoured and used by many (the higher up the pecking order).

As to caring about privatisation, I personally think that this would be a disaster:

- costs would skyrocket
- efficiency would fall
- taxpayers' confidentiality would be thrown out of the window (probably quite literally) etc.

As to why staff and non staff are not screaming at their MPs, I honestly don't know.

As to PCS, I suspect it believes that it too is part of the "charmed circle".

As ever, comments and views are very welcome.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance 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 Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



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"