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Bureaucracy!

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Colin Bishop:
I sent the letter below to my tax office this morning, HM Revenue and Customs is by far the most inefficient organisation I have had the misfortune to deal with....

Dear Mr xxxxx,

I was extremely surprised to receive your letter dated 17th September this morning (26th September) enclosing my P60 for 2008-2009. The only reason you had my P60 was because it was attached to the tax return you are now requesting from me which I sent you on 13th August. I can only assume that it has been mislaid in your office and perhaps you could check your records and endeavour to locate it. In the meantime, I did take the precaution of scanning the return myself and I am enclosing a copy with this letter together with copies of all my recent correspondence with your office in case this has also gone missing. I trust you will find this helpful.

Also this morning I have received a letter from your Surrey and N. Hampshire Office informing me that I shall be expected to complete a tax return. I already know this as your own office told me exactly the same thing in your letter dated 10th June signed by Mr yyyyyy as a result of which I completed the return which appears to have been lost by yourselves.

As I explained to your office in my letter of 1st June, I simply want to clear the small amount of outstanding tax due in respect of 2008-2009 and would appreciate it if this matter could be resolved without further delay.

Yours sincerely,

Colin Bishop

FullLeatherJacket:
Ah - the innocence of the retired local authority employee................ We should treasure such a quality; it's rare to come across one of such mature years with so much faith left to lose.  %)

Colin - I worked for that bunch for 31 years and I never met anyone else who could understand properly-written English. In my experience prayer stood more chance of a response. Sarcasm was wasted on such creatures, while plain facts were usually misinterpreted or ignored as being too complicated. That was then.

From what I hear from the poor souls of my vintage who didn't manage to escape, morale these days is bumping along the bottom - from below - and a local office is no more than a number-crunching factory full of numpties in woolly hats with woolly heads under them; and that's  the management. Along with Solitaire and Facebook, losing documents is a favourite pass-time in HMRC (or didn't you hear about the CD ROMs which went AWOL?).

I wish you luck in resolving your problem, mate - you'll need it. My advice would be that if they don't want your money then don't beat yourself up trying to give it to them.

Works for me!!  ok2

FLJ

Colin Bishop:
FLJ, I have a long history of explaining to them what I owe them as they are unable to work it out for themselves so no innocence I'm afraid, just resigned frustration. As you say, the simplest things appear to totally flummox them such as changing your employer lease car part way through a tax year which appeared to come as a total novelty. What I am afraid of is having to pay the same tax twice to different offices! I also have contacts which confirm your views abour morale, particularly following the shotgun marriage of Tax and Customs.

I was going to say that my own employers in local government would never have plumbed such depths but from recent contact with the last few remaining survivors of my old office who were masde redundant in July it does appear that they are heading rapidly in that direction.

It's getting almosr as bad as the private sector - with the notable exception of a certain purveyor of electronic products....

Colin

The long Build:
Each month I have to submit our Company's Intrastat report to HM Customs ,
A year ago I got a phone call from them asking me why I was being Non-Compliant !! after she had explained that they had not received our report until the 4th of the following month and as such logged as period 2 , so when in what was actually period 2 and I submitted our report they deemed it as period 3 because they had no record of period 1 , which they did but they had logged it as period 2   so because of this she said I had 2 red marks or as she called it Non compliance hits..  Luckily I always keep our fax return note which clearly shows , albeit on the very last day that we had faxed it over.. Her comment oh , we don't really check that fax any more as we moved offices !!! hence why they got it 5 days late. %%

At to rub salt into the wounds she then stated " So we can log you down that you will be compliant from now on"   >>:-(  

DickyD:
You can have one of my tax returns if you like Colin, they keep sending them to me and I packed up work 7 years ago. %)

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