However, perhaps the most damning slight against the taxman comes from a new report from the Adjudicators Office, the body overseeing the taxmans conduct, which has raised concerns over the way HMRC has targeted and treated certain sections of society.
Targeting the vulnerable
Heres what the report says: In recent years we have seen a growth in cases where HMRCs decision making has had an adverse impact on vulnerable groups of people, for example pensioners facing unexpected tax bills.
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How insulting to a section of society the press don't actually give a stuff about but brand them in one lump (when its gonna sell a story) as 'vulnerable'. That rather implies that all pensioners are doddery, can't remember where they put their marbles and are not capable of doing something simple like check a tax code or calculate how much they should be paying. In my (limited to personal knowledge of folk) experience most pensioners could tell if they had paid a penny too much or too little. It aint rocket science to work it out and these folk learned how to do addies up without the aid of a calculator. Whilst I accept that the taxman makes mistakes - Mr Boo once got a letter saying they wanted summat like 300K, lol he'd already worked out what he had paid and what he should have paid during the year and the 'adjustment' was actually a refund of about 130 - the law of averages says that some of those mistakes are in the taxpayers favour. How come we don't get loads of complaints about those?