Enter Your E-mail

There is so much going on at the moment, it is difficult to know where to begin.

One of the key issues rattling around at the moment is HMRC’s fervent desire to be able to access taxpayers’ bank funds without their permission. This is outrageous but not, perhaps, the most outrageous thing that HMRC (or HM Treasury) is currently trying to do.

Many taxpayers will, I think, have suffered already thanks to HMRC’s almost unerring ability to, er, err, when it comes to Pay As You Earn (PAYE) codes. I recently came across a case where a pensioner’s Personal Allowances had inexplicably disappeared, only for the HMRC officer to acknowledge, “it’s a known issue – do you want us to put the Personal Allowance back in?”, and then to accuse me of being difficult when I persisted in trying to find out exactly why the mistake had been made...

To be clear, no I don’t want you just to put this taxpayers’ code right on request. I want you to get off your backsides (to coin a phrase used by your Chief Executive) and find out how and where you made these mistakes, and to correct them all without being asked. Is what I should like to have said.

To a cynical taxpayer under PAYE, it might seem that, not only does HMRC want to fiddle with your income before you get it but they now also want to claw it back even after it’s been paid.  “Er, yes, it’s a known issue – would you like us to return the funds we took from your bank accounts for no fathomable reason?”

On to Affront #2: the idea that there should be a new “strict liability criminal offence” for having undeclared offshore income. “Strict liability” means that, unlike most crimes, you can be guilty even without knowledge of having committed the offence. Some might think this implausible, but HMRC has helpfully provided an example of exactly the kind of scenario which should be protected by mens rea in their recent No Safe Havens 2014 publication. The unfortunate Mrs. A on page 3 of the report may well be someone’s grandmother. HMRC reassures us that it will have appropriate safeguards in place – comforting to know, after they’ve done away with one of the most important criminal law safeguards applied the world over. Hold on a moment though, didn’t we just have to get rid of a load of concessionary measures because Wilkinson said HMRC couldn’t exercise discretion? Clap Granny in irons: we have targets to reach. (See page 11).

Affront #3 relates to HMRC’s plans to sell taxpayer data to third parties. I must admit to being a bit naive here: when I originally read some time ago about HMRC's plans to provide data, I assumed it would be just the basic details required for HMRC to get meaningful information from credit-referencing agencies in the furtherance of its own debt-management function. But according to some newspapers, that  is exactly what HMRC wanted us to think, as it has apparently been trialling the process already – but has “contracted in” the credit agencies to HMRC so that it isn’t breaking the law by... passing taxpayer information to third parties. I find myself wondering if some HMRC announcements should include a Disclosure Of Tergiversation And Sophistry.

It is frankly incredible that an agency which has spent years devising one of the most sophisticated and comprehensive databases in the world, (apparently), to find people that deliberately want to stay hidden from the taxman's view,  could confidently reassure us that such intimate and detailed information would remain anonymous in the hands of third parties, simply by removing a few details in a record. 

I have not yet decided which of these is the most offensive assault on taxpayers’ rights and freedoms, nor what we might do about them. Suggestions would be welcome.

Regards all,

TW Ed

ps No thesauri were harmed in writing this article