YOU HAVE YOUR SAY
EVERY week, Money Mail receives hundreds of your letters and emails about our stories. Here are some of the best from our investigation last week into a devastating official report that found HMRC staff are wrongly rejecting complaints about disputed bills. SOMETHING has got to be done to stop the personal sacrifice and strain caused from taking on the taxman.
This is especially the case when innocent taxpayers are retired and should be concentrating on enjoying life instead!
M.S., London.
HMRC said I owed them £169 from three years previous. I said I refused to pay as they had all the correct information at the time. I said they should have got it right the first time. I never heard from them again.
S.I., Bournemouth.
I’M A small business and my life has been made hell by the taxman. Almost every penalty they’ve issued me, they have eventually withdrawn.
And their attitude is appalling. They say things like ‘we don’t lose letters’, then write to me asking me to resend my letters because they mislaid them.
I send everything by recorded post because if I don’t, they say they didn’t receive it.
F.H., by email.
THE worst aspect of fighting HMRC is that you are left feeling powerless, and then end up having to pay a monthly direct debit for their underpayment mistake.
Thank you Daily Mail for taking this issue on — the whole organisation should be investigated.
L.A., South Tyneside.
I TOOK on HMRC’s clueless staff — and got them to write off the money — but what I most resent is that I had to hire an accountant to help me do it.
I paid nearly £250 for the research and preparation needed to convince them they had no case against me. What a waste of cash that I could have used to a far better purpose.
D.A., Taunton, Somerset.
I ’ VE been raging against t he t reatment dished out over my husband’s underpayment of £560 compared to the tiny tax bills paid by the likes of Starbucks, Google and the like.
Why is it OK for HMRC to employ staff to hound me with letters and phone calls, but not OK for them to go after large multinationals?
It’s truly disgraceful.
S.S., Cumbria.
I GOT a £600 tax bill for underpayment, and called their phone number three times to sort it out — and three times I was given a different reason why.
In the end, I had to visit a tax office to speak to someone, yet even the guy who went through it said it didn’t make sense and couldn’t work it out.
How exactly are ordinary folk who don’t spend hours understanding tax policy supposed to do it?
W.T., Southampton.