HMRC and in particular their VAT division are notorious for the invasive powers they have and because of understaffing, appalling customer service – and we are, after all, customers, and we pay their wages as they should never forget.
But it turns out they have found a new way to screw money out of us.
I was fined £100 and received three points on my driving licence for a smart motorway offence (previously only punishable if witnessed by a police officer – but now we are watched everywhere, all the time), driving on a motorway under a gantry with a large red cross above the lane which I was in, which I thought was intended as a warning that a lane closure was coming up, but I was under the 40mph speed restriction which was in place, having been guilty of precisely two minor speeding offences (and no others of any kind) in over 40 years of driving. I felt vindicated in my belief that the gantries are cynically used as money-grabbers. The motorway was completely clear without roadworks or any other obstruction for tens of miles and could be seen to be clear for a considerable distance beyond the gantry and although the speed limit was not ended, it would have been totally unsafe to continue to crawl along at 38 mph when everyone else was doing 70 or more, just as it would have been unsafe to swerve into the busy outside lane as I approached the gantry. Everyone knows that the information on them is more often than not out of date and/or simply untrue. I saw the camera flashes going off like a strobe as car after car after lorry was caught out. The government rakes in a fortune. The only more irritating thing is when they are used to issue patronising lifestyle platitudes, including last summer’s reminders not to drive without water in the heat. If you are going to need to drink water during your journey but are incapable of remembering to carry some without a nanny state prompt, then you really shouldn’t be driving at all. What next? Did you remember to use the loo before you left?
My company’s VAT return was due on 7th March 2024. My track record for filing is pretty much immaculate and has been for decades. After a depressing first few months of the year when, like everyone else, we are struggling to make a living and make ends meet (the only thing Sunak has “delivered” is a huge increase in the number of people having to use food banks), and an extremely busy working day on which I was not firing on all cylinders anyway, I woke up with a start in the small hours of March 8th and realised the VAT return had slipped my mind. It was duly filed within nine hours of the deadline, i.e. at around 9am. For this heinous crime I received this morning, March 15th, a letter dated March 13th, telling me that I have been issued with a “VAT penalty point”. Four of those, and you get fined £200. What are we, schoolchildren being given ‘demerits’?
It is possible to request a review but I cannot argue with the fact that the return was very slightly late any more than I could argue (although I did try) with the traffic ‘offence’. Small businesses need help and leeway, especially in these hugely difficult times, not some ridiculous, childish penalty points system. Why haven’t I been awarded a gold star for each of the scores of other returns which I have filed on time? It makes my blood boil. On the other hand, I am told that tax refunds are taking up to four months to process and that it is currently taking an hour for HMRC to answer the phone – not too bad for them, I have spent a lot longer than that waiting on the line in the past.
These are very small matters in comparison to the way the current government in particular has screwed the entire populace and brought Britain to its knees, presided over huge increases in real poverty, devastated wildlife, the countryside and our natural resources, and reduced public services to catastrophic levels of decline, wherever they can affecting those most in need, creating relentless pressure and worry on personal, local, national and global levels, all the while lining their own pockets, those of their friends and families and those of the shareholders and directors of the big corporations (think HS2 and the Covid contracts) but on a micro level, I think they are symptomatically significant.
Meanwhile there are plans to ‘house’ seriously ill child immigrants in shipping containers and as if the entire Rwanda scheme were not diabolical enough, the Home Office has awarded a £6.4m contract to provide facilities for “Use of Force training” to a complex property partnership called HCP LR Cardington LP which essentially comprises Hackman Capital Partners and London Regional Properties, the latter owned by two billionaire brothers who have been major donors to … the Tory party. Neither arm of the company was willing to respond or comment.
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