Did anyone ever use HMRC's Online Customer Forum?

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An article on accountingweb confirming HMRC has closed the above. The thread revealed the following:

By kevinringer
07th Jul 2025 10:16
Thanks for asking. I was expelled from the Agent Forum. I had received a number of warnings and was suspended for 6 months in 2022, reinstated then permanently expelled in 2024 without warning after having a clean track record for the 18 months since reinstatement (apart from one issue HMRC and I disagreed on). I was expelled for asking questions HMRC found challenging, and for pointing out when HMRC's responses were wrong or inconsistent (and supplying proof such as cross referencing to other Forum responses or elsewhere on GOV.UK). My PB got involved and raised it at the IOG meeting, but HMRC refused to discuss it. Big Brother HMRC are judge and jury. Curiously, HMRC get in touch with me from time to time to discuss various random issues. Maybe they do it for the entertainment value. I'm still active here on AWeb.

The closure should certainly help Taxationweb's question and answer forum traffic. Time for Lee to dust down his typewriter and start writing tax articles again?

As for the above, how were HMRC permitted to silence someone I suspect was providing much better advice than HMRC. Very much like denying valid FOI requests where they were damaging to HMRC's leadership.

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https://community.hmrc.gov.uk/customerforums/sa/5fd1194c-6fcc-ec11-bea1-00155d975a55?page=2

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Presumably this is the work of Jean-Paul (currently minus one) Marks

By kevinringer
07th Jul 2025 09:51
HMRC expunging all references to the Customer Forum is the clearest manifestation yet of HMRC's 1984 Ministry of Truth. Curiously HMRC have not obliterated the Agent Forum from Agent Update, yet. Maybe that will be erased in due course. Why did HMRC delete the Customer Forum references? Was it because HMRC feel the responses don't reflect well on HMRC? Or was it because the Customer Forum itself is no longer accessible? Both of those reasons also apply to the Agent Forum. My concern is the Customer Forum existed at the time the Agent Updates were publishes, and HMRC were actively encouraging 'customers' to use the Customer Forum, so by deleting all references to the Customer Forum, HMRC are attempting to erase it from history. I have never known HMRC do anything like this before. The PBs needs to come down hard on HMRC for doing this because if HMRC are left unchecked, what other history will HMRC re-write?


Replying to kevinringer:

By FactChecker
07th Jul 2025 12:36
"by deleting all references to the Customer Forum, HMRC are attempting to erase it from history" ... which was my first thought - and concern!

The increasing number of 're-issues' of their various guides (not just the newsletters but official 'how to use' advisory guides) has until now been but a sad reflection on the number of times that they've had to make a correction (typically when an error of fact or calc has been pointed out by their readers).

But this re-writing of history is not a correction (as you say "the Customer Forum existed at the time the Agent Updates were published") ... so it reeks of Stalinism.

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If HMRC's own staff can't answer tax questions correctly, what chance does Joe Public have with perhaps zero tax knowledge?

[Lambs]

I very much doubt that Lee uses a typewriter.

He seems to me to be the kind of chap who rushed headlong into the world of "Word Processors" (remember them?).

A bit like buying shares in Betamax. Or HD discs, instead of Blu-Ray.

Regards All,

Lambs

[etf]

Your reply made me think back to a very different work landscape.

For younger readers, in 1984 I used a dictaphone to compose letters which then went into a typing pool tape queue (bit of a nightmare in your first week as you felt the whole office was listening to you using the dictaphone...and they were). A 1st draft came back on cheap paper which had to be proof read and only then was the expensive embossed paper version produced for signing and dispatch (a difficult conversation would arise with a secretary if an error was found on the expensive paper version).

I also remember using a calculator which produced a written till receipt to add up dividends with the totals entered onto a Double Tax claim form.

I don't think I ever had a WP...straight onto a computer and the slowest one finger typing known to man/woman.