Anna van Praagh
(Picture: Matt Writtle)With all my aspirations for “living my best life” in 2022, I hadn’t envisaged I would find myself caught up in what is essentially benefit fraud. But hey, life’s full of surprises.
Turns out a while ago my salary went up and I didn’t realise that meant I was no longer entitled to child benefit. Two years ago they informed me of my mistake, I apologised profusely and asked how to repay, and well, ever since let’s just say I have been caught up in a truly Kafka-esque nightmare with HMRC.
I owe them money, and want to pay them. But I have learnt the hard way it isn’t that simple. The first thing that happened after I tried to pay was I didn’t hear from them for a year and presumed (hollow laugh) that by some happy accident I had fallen off their radar.
Out of the blue, a year later, fines started flying through my door. Every day brought a new letter from HMRC. Penalties and threatening notes about charges I couldn’t follow. Holed up in my semi in Acton, surrounded by brown envelopes flying through the door like some kind of Harry Potter dystopian nightmare, I began to feel under siege.
I tried emailing them, no reply ever. I started dedicating hours each day to calling them. When you call HMRC they say: “We are here to help you. Abuse of any kind will not be tolerated.” At first I thought that was odd. But now I get it. It’s hard to speak to any of them without actually screaming. There are countless helplines for different issues and almost any call ends with someone telling you that you will need to call another number, which, naturally, you will never get through to. Forget trying to explain your situation or the circumstances of your error, or why any of their myriad fines might be incorrect. You will slowly begin to realise that this is an organisation about as benevolent as North Korea. In fact, is Kim Jong-un actually in charge of HMRC? Honestly, I think it’s possible.
Months slipped by, I paid one of the £400 penalties but couldn’t work out how to make the problem go away. They kept asking for tax assessments. I hired an accountant, paid him £360 hoping he could decipher it all. I set up a direct debit to repay them what I owe. More fines arrived. It has been two years now since I initially heard from HMRC. I still don’t know if I am correctly paying what I need to or if I’m going to receive more penalties. Why the obsession with persecuting the little man? I read last week that Facebook UK paid just £29 million corporation tax despite record £3.3 billion sales. It’s crazy.
More importantly, while I can afford to pay my fines, in the cost-of-living crisis there are people who won’t be able to pay basic bills. I’d like to ask HMRC whether they think the way they are treating ordinary people is ok. And why they don’t make it easier for people to understand how and what to pay.
After hundreds of hours on the phone to them I have grimly deduced that it’s impossible to reach anyone who can give me an overview of my case. If this is the way government services are run these days, God help us all.
In other news...
Does anyone else get the unpleasant sense of sexism in the treatment of government mandarin Antonia Romeo?
Romeo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice, has been in the news because Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng reportedly signed off her appointment as the most senior civil servant at the Treasury last week, only for his decision to be reversed by the PM. James Bowler will now get the job.
I’m always reading negative things about Romeo, from her “obsession” with “a woke agenda” to people describing her as “a massive self-publicist”.
When she was consul-general in New York, people criticised her penchant for wearing designer clothes (aka professionalism — championing British fashion designers across the pond) and — that word again — they said she was “obsessed” with her social media presence. I’ve met Romeo a few times and think she is fascinating, brilliantly clever and deeply professional. If Britain is run by people like her, we are in safe hands. Or would we prefer every civil servant was just another version of Sir Humphrey?
