I can not disagree with your statement. In an ideal world our government’s departments should be funded adequately to provide the service they are there to provide. I have called their customer service 3 or 4 times and never actually spoke to a human. One time waiting over an hour, listening to the same mundane hold music.
But going back to my response to your original reply, if an organisation/business is underfunded/short of money then they need to be more efficient with their resources. Why waste time chasing 10 individuals/businesses who owe you a £1000 each when you can chase one who owes you £100,000. As I say they owe me money, they are chasing a fine I am challenging because they didn’t do what they said they would do.
In an ideal world all services would be a) funded adequately and b) be managed by competent people who will use the resources effectively. However, we don’t live in an ideal world.
How much public money do you think is wasted each year by people, making decisions they are not skilled enough to make? Throwing money at things doesn’t result in a better service.
I work in UK HE and am still dealing with the fallout of the rapid transition from classroom to online. It is not the same thing, and to do it properly takes years of thought and preparation.
It happened in just a few months in early-2020 and a great many people have been disadvantaged because of it.
One thing I have noticed is an overzealous approach to fines especially the last 5 years.
My experience with HMRC was first a crazy situation with child benefit. I was simple case of paye. Only income in household. Rules got changed that if you go above income threshold no longer entitled CB. Which is fair enough. You either don’t claim it or pay it back in tax.
I had a tax bill for 2 years of child benefit (because systems didn’t talk to one another). I told my mate about it as we had both been promoted at the same time, and he had 2 kids just like me. He went to the HMRC to highlight his own situation. They not only have him a bill for child benefit but gave him a fine of several hundred pounds. Our situations where no different. However he got fined for volunteering the information!
Now it would have been much easier for me not to claim child benefit in future years. Except my wife does not work. To get national insurance credits for her pension we needed to continue to claim child benefit . This means I had to shift from paye where it’s all automatic to filling out tax return. So now I am in the system for HMRCs self assessment. They now expect a self assessment every year.
However I left the UK in 2019. My last tax year was a pain in the arse as it was a self assessment split between two countries and formal declaration that no longer have any UK income. However for the last 2 years they have fined me for not filling out a self assessment. Each year I have spent 5+ hours explaining I don’t live in the UK, I have no UK income, I have filled out all the forms to say I am now taxed in NZ.
It gets dropped in the end, but I half expect it next year too.
Now the funny thing is the systems talk enough, that a few weeks after I had first informed HMRC that I was a resident in NZ (about 2 months after getting off the plane) My wife got a student loan letter, with a fine saying we did not notify them we had moved several times (both within UK and then to NZ). It was something like £1000. However no repayments where ever due as my wife has been a stay at home mum the entire time.
Again we had to fight and again they dropped the fines.
My take is they are applying blanket fines in areas in the hope that people just pay them. Fine a 1000 people, 800 complain and 200 just pay.
I can only imagine yours and your friends frustration. I have had a few issues with them, for example I had a company vehicle and they got my tax bracket/benefit in Kind wrong, which meant I got hit with additional tax to clear what I had underpaid. I get that i had benefited by being under taxed, but I had trusted my company and the HMRC to tax me correctly. So i then had to be over taxed to clear the debt. It took them over a year to realise this.
Possibly more imported Australian Liberal Party shittery. They’ve been practicing that for a long time on social security recipients - fair game in their awful ideology of ‘lifters and learners’.
There has been a lot of ‘cross pollination’ between UK and AUS civil service and right wing politics - sounds like Lynton Crosby and his mob have a lot to answer for.
He’s the best option of those who have declared so far. Won’t be favourite though, unfortunately. Behind Sunak but ahead of Zahawi and Braverman. Anyone else declared that I’m forgetting? Hunt? He’d be slightly behind Hunt if he’s running again.
Isn’t Hunt damaged goods? and surely Sunak’s non-dom issues must be a concern. Also, wasn’t he too closely alligned to Johnson to be untainted by the sleaze even if he did deal the fatal blow?
Of course, all of that - but this is the Conservative Parliamentary Party we’re talking about, and then the membership. They’ll perceive Sunak as a “big hitter”. Not to mention the fact he’s an ethnic minority, the Conservatives will see that as presenting themselves as “progressive”.
. This means I had to shift from paye where it’s all automatic to filling out tax return. So now I am in the system for HMRCs self assessment. They now expect a self assessment every year.
