Harry Phibbs

An interesting story in the Times which highlights the foolishness of giving HMRC the power to take money straight out of people's bank accounts. Tax lawyer Simon Evans only found out that he apparently owed HM Revenue & Customs money when it was extracted from his bank account. Last month he got a letter from HMRC to say it had taken £2,300 out of his account because it claimed he had unpaid tax. “There wasn’t a dispute, we’d never heard from HMRC nor had our accountant who has handled our taxes for many years,” Evans said. “It turns out that HMRC had sent letters to an old address in London that we haven’t lived at in years,” he said. “This is despite the fact that all of our Companies House and tax returns are up to date with our correct address and our accountant’s address." “If we owed this money we would of course have paid it. We wanted to know if there had been an administrative oversight, but over several calls no one at HMRC could tell us what we owed, or from what period it was owed. Our accountant is still trying to get to the bottom of it." This is what happens when you give an incompetent public sector bureaucracy the power to take money out of people's bank accounts.