Daily View: Tax mistakes
Ìý
The [subscription required] that taxpayers will willingly pay the amount owed without squirming, in a mock letter penned to the HMRC:
"I bear you no ill will, because I realise that this fiasco is entirely my own fault. Obviously I noticed that there was an option on my tax return to leave it up to HMRC to calculate how much tax I owed you. But, evidently, I must have ticked instead the box marked: 'If you would like HMRC to farcically miscalculate your tax, tick here.'"
The indecipherable tax codes are to blame , after getting caught by the inability to calculate his own tax a few months ago:
"One reason for HM Revenue & Customs' (HMRC) inability to get the tax affairs of millions of people right is their astonishing faith in people's ability to interpret the tax codes they are sent. The codes, typically three digits and a letter, make no sense whatsoever unless taxpayers take the trouble to look up their meaning on the HMRC website. Yet the taxman somehow seems to hope people will be able to work out whether they're paying the right amount of tax from peering at these cryptograms."
the mistake on cuts made back in 2005:
"Two departments, the Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise, were merged in 2005 by the then chancellor Gordon Brown, ending a separation that goes back to 1909. You can see the argument - that it is illogical to have two departments collecting taxes, not one - but in practice the task of collecting direct taxes is very different from collecting indirect ones. The latter is much more hands-on, visiting businesses and so on, whereas the former relies more on the scrutiny of accounts.
Ìý
"Merging was always going to be a nightmare, as some of us commented at the time. But this error was compounded by two further factors. Staff was cut, on my quick tally, by close to 20 per cent as a result of "efficiencies" from the merger. Offices were closed."
, as someone who worked in the Inland Revenue for over 30 years, what he sees as the downfall of the institution:
"The root of this chaos was not the entirely logical merger with Customs and Excise but that the new board was largely composed of people with little experience of the ethos and professionalism of either service - Dave Hartnett, the deputy chief executive, being a notable exception.
Ìý
"Their initiatives were hampered by Gordon Brown's annual 5 per cent cut in funding - an odd economy for an organisation whose job it was to raise taxes for him to spend."
this mistake will bring about a change in how tax is collected which, he complains, would be be an "assault on our liberties":
"PAYE is out of date. Far fewer of us have a single employer, and more of us have a range of sources of income, with a mix of part-time jobs, self-employment, and full-time jobs. So the old PAYE coding system is on its last legs.
nbsp;
"But what should replace it? I know what the Revenue would like. They have campaigned for years to get as many of us as possible onto PAYE so that the money comes to them through employers, without any fuss. They hate self-employed people because it doesn't, and because they're awkward to deal with. So what's their ideal now? Simple, have tax taken automatically out of people's bank accounts. Simple, straightforward, easy."
Links in full
•
•
•
•
•
