Several Jobs PAYE Tax Problem Again

Fair enough. However, asking for a simple mistake to be put right isn't really what I'd call a complaint.

I find your "very often" interesting. It suggests that sometimes you did not succeed. Did you then leave the matter, or did you get it resolved by writing?

No disrespect to your sister, but many call centres are staffed by idiots, enough to give the rest of them a bad name. Add to that the fact that you often have to queue for many minutes, and the result is that any organisation's expectation that customers should phone is completely unreasonable. Hence, whenever it is important that a problem be fixed, but not terribly important that it be fixed immediately, writing is generally preferable because it wastes less of your time.

It's both, because a phone call can never be formal (unless both parties record it).

Simon posted

What has the ability to enforce judgement got to do with it? We are talking about discussing complaints, not enforcing judgements.

Not at all. Once he has waived confidentiality, it doesn't matter whether he admits it or not. HMRC can disclose it, if it is true.

It's just an excuse for officials to protect themselves. The police and NHS do exactly the same, just because they can.

These days, yes. HMRC can always publish its own version of events on its website if it feels a report was not fair.

Simon posted

And where did that 8 per cent come from? From taxpayers. *All* of the contributions to your salary came from taxpayers.

Don't get me wrong, I have no idea whether you are worth your pension or not. I'm just pointing out that it *all* came from taxpayers.

It's no thanks to taxpayers, is it?

Don't you understand that taxpayers pay your salary and pension?

You are lucky to be working for someone for 34 years. If you were in the private sector you may have found yourself out of work because your employer went bust.

I saw how you treated a comment by somebody in the private sector. You seemed to not understand the concept of an employer going bust. You expected them to always be able to pay their creditors.

I had a client who had revenues of £50k a month until 9/11. Then his revenues went down to £3k a month! He had to make employees redundant, the company went bust and he had to pay the bank personal guarantees. He'd just been receiving an average salary yet he had the responsibility and stress of running the business. I don't think public sector employees realise how lucky they are.

I do love the lie told, that he was unaware of the bankruptcy until his return from holiday. What about all the letters and action taken before this? Why did he leave it until he was made bankrupt.

They are covered by an act, you cannot just waive an act of parliament.

My wife would have a better pension outside the NHS, a pension paid for by the taxpayers, but then she would also be paid better but not be providing a service to those who cannot afford the service.

Do you think that they do not also pay tax?

Right......... Wonder why most of your colleagues do not feel this way?

Have you any evidence that most of his colleagues do not feel this way?

I think they do pay tax but other taxpayers have to pay the rest.

Can you find one accountant who thinks HMRC are competent?

Just to make it clear. I am not making out that every individual person who works for HMRC is incompetent.

What I am saying is that the culture of the organisation doesn't encourage people who want to improve services to rise to a position where they can do most good. All the managers I have spoken to off the record say it is a nightmare trying to get obvious improvements carried out.

In the early 70s I left a private company to work for the Yorkshire Electricity Board at double the wages. The work was straightforward clerical work - it was later when I took A levels, a degree and professional exams. The person I was replacing was retiring and I was able to do his days work in 30 minutes! I asked the head of the department if there was something else I could do and he got various staff to get me to do some of their work. They realised that I was showing them up by doing their work much quicker than them so they started to make out they didn't have any work they could give to me. They would spend the day doing their work very slowly and chatting to colleagues. I'm not saying it's like that now but I think there is a different attitude in the public sector to the private sector.

Please look at the thread "Self assessment / student loan". I'll copy the question here.

"When I filled in my self assessment online one of the questions asked if I had an outstanding student loan, I ticked to say that I had. On another page it asked me what payments I'd made towards my student loan that year. I didn't earn enough to have to pay anything so I put 0. But it told me that 0 wasn't an acceptable value. Left it blank and it told me that since I'd declared that I had a student loan I had to fill this part in. I didn't want to make a figure up so I went back to the question that asked me if I had a student loan and unticked it. From there I could continue past the question about SL repayments. A few months later I got a letter from the Inland Revenue telling me that their records show I have a student loan and I should have declared this on my self assessment form. It was only to say that they would be amending it for me though. I'm in the same situation this year, it won't let me continue if I put the correct information in. What am I supposed to do?"

Isn't this an example of basic stupidity by HMRC?

Of course, some people will say that I am the only person who thinks HMRC are incompetent. Others will say they can't discuss any particular case because of confidentiality.

The reality is that HMRC are coming up with services that are not fit for a banana republic.

Cue: "It's not me. It's the other company that are doing it for us. We didn't think to look at it and ask for changes. Why should we care we will get our pension."

Actually other taxpayers don't pay just the rest, they pay it all.

In one sense HMRC staff don't really pay any income tax, and the effective cost (to the exchequer, overheads apart) of employing tax collectors is their *net* salary plus the cost of pension provision.

In a way the same is true of everyone in the public sector. They really only pay pretend taxes.

Well I suppose for the last 20 years, I can thank the Tazpayers that DONT pay enough, its their existance that means that I am still employed.

They dont pay my Salary, the Government does. They are funded by a wide variety of resources, some of which is direct taxation from the working population.

As to my pension, this will be paid from contributions that were deducted from MY salary, so they wont be paying that either.

Oh I understand alright. The case you are quoting is the one where the employer either made a concious decision not to pay the Employers NI or, Deducted tax and NI from its workers and then chose to use this to prop up their business instead of paying this to HMRC, and then whinging when they asked for it.

So the fact that each time we get a change of government, who then target the civil service to a) take a pay freeze and b) lose a large number of staff.

So you dont think that the fact that more than 75% of the offices have been closed and the jbs in London moved up North, thats 12000 people out of work, and another 12000 over the whole of the UK out of work because of "Efficiences" and "New Technology".

So that makes us imune does it?

I live in the real world, so why dont you!

Both direct and indirect taxation is paid for by taxpayers. Where do you think the government gets its money from?

Your salary is paid for by taxpayers via the government. Don't you realise that yet?

This shows that you have no idea about business. You treat this money as if the employer should pay to the government but if they don't have enough money they can't pay it. You seem to think that a business has little pots of money and it's just a question of putting money in their ready to pay creditors but it is a lot more stressful and complicated than that. Maybe that's because HMRC don't have to worry about whether they can afford to pay suppliers or government.

Lets see who lives in the real world!

The spokesman said: "So far, HMRC has achieved all staff reductions and efficiency targets without compulsory redundancies and it remains our intention to avoid them wherever reasonably possible."

If HMRC want to keep the job it would appear they can.

Private sector employees certainly live in a different work to you.

Just a preview of most accountancy magazines and websites show that the majority do not hold this view. Do you?

A preview? How do you come by that? Do you work in their publication?

Are you sure they show that? Is it not merely the case that they do not show that they do hold this view? This is a completely different thing: No evidence of something is not equivalent to evidence of the opposite. Just because people don't say something doesn't mean they don't believe it, they could just be too polite.

From personal experience I have no particular reason to hold that view, but if the stories told are to be believed, then nobody can help but hold that view.

Of course an assertion that as a whole, or collectively, they are incompetent does not mean they're all idiots, or individually incompetent. It simply means that, for whatever reason (under-resourcing is the usual reason given) they are incapable of acting competently.