Slightly disturbing start to the New Year

[simont]

I just got into work for the first time this year and found an envelope lying on my desk addressed to me c/o my company, from HM Revenue & Customs. That immediately made me nervous, of course: the imagination can think up plenty of dramatic reasons why they might write to me, and they're all bad news. It's harder to think of nice reasons they might write to me, because ‘you've paid too much tax, here, have some back’ is so improbable and all the other nice or neutral reasons are just so bureaucratically tedious that the imagination shies away from thinking them up.

So I opened the envelope, and it said that HMRC would like my personal details because Royal Mail have been returning their recent letters to me as undelivered.

I have no idea why RM should be doing this. But then, I don't even know what HMRC think my current address is; they didn't bother to mention that in the letter. (Perhaps I should suggest they read ‘How To Report Bugs Effectively’.)

But most annoyingly, I still don't know what they've actually been trying to write to me about, which means that that feeling of nervous anticipation and potential doom hasn't gone away. Of all the things the letter could have said, this is probably the only one which could have left me in this state of mind. Gah.

(I'm also slightly disturbed that the date on the letter says 25th December. Do taxmen really work right through Christmas?!)

Comments

[tlingel.livejournal.com]

You've got me worried now. I haven't been sent a tax return for several years so I'm worried that at some point they'll decide I should have had one and I'll have several to do. On the bright side, I know that they owe _me_ money because of the way the pension tax is done.I wish they would allow ARM to do all that for higher rate tax payers. Although given that they paid me last month and I'm sure they shouldn't have, because of the way the health insurance works, maybe that's not such a good idea after all HR are looking into the payment

[pm215]

Our company has a convenient pension arrangement which goes by the slightly alarming name of "salary sacrifice": instead of you paying 3% contributions (say), you agree to have your salary reduced by the equivalent amount, and the employer pays a higher employer's contribution instead. This also reduces the employer's NI bill, so they split the difference with the employee. As a side effect there's no need to reclaim tax on pension contributions because you aren't making any.

[mooism.livejournal.com]

If they have the wrong address for you, who else thinks you have the same wrong address? Maybe you should check your credit reference files?

[aldabra]

You're sure it's not phishing?

[simont]

Paper phishing? Gosh. Actually hadn't occurred to me. Does it happen?

Seems reasonably unlikely, though, because they aren't asking for anything really scary like bank details (my DOB is the most personal detail on the form), and because they already know a lot about me (such as my work address and NI number). I'd expect phishing to contain a lot less existing detail and ask for a lot more, particularly if it's done on paper and hence is subject to postal charges.

But I double-checked anyway by googling up the HMRC office addresses in question, and the address on the reply envelope is indeed the address of HMRC Cambridgeshire Area. So, no, it isn't phishing.

(The reply envelope, incidentally, is one of those irritating ones with a little box labelled "Please affix postage stamp", which is terribly easy to mistake for a reply-paid one if you just register that there's a printed thing in the corner and don't look any closer. Bloody cheapskates.)

[gerald_duck]

Why's that irritating? I say it's HMRC's problem if they make the envelope look like it's reply-paid so it arrives with postage due.

[simont]

True, although I can't quite bring myself to deliberately post it without a stamp now I've noticed it isn't reply-paid. Which makes it irritating, because now I've got to go and find my stamps.

Still, on the cheapskate front it's an improvement over the city council, who have also sent me a tax-related letter in the last couple of days: they didn't even bother to include an envelope at all.

[lnr]

Can you guarantee they'll actually accept stuff that arrives postage-due though? They're not obliged to!

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

The HMRC's computer works right through Christmas, churning out letters. Maybe you should offer to program it to report bugs more effectively!

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

That happened to me last year. I can't remember what the letter actually *was*, but nothing very important.

[mair_in_grenderich]

Perhaps someone has sent you a parcel of something nice that has customs tax due on it?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Death doesn't take Christmas off, why should taxes?

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

Oh tidings of comfort and joy, etc.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Maybe tax-men don't actually work at Christmas but post- and pre- date things to make people upset? :)

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

I submitted my tax return on Dec 25 :-) It did take a few days to get an acknowledgment, so I doubt all the taxmen work through Christmas...

I got a ‘you've paid too much tax, here, have some back’ letter once! It was handwritten as well (but back in 1992ish), to say ~"In the last few years you have claimed a tax refund and I wanted to remind you in case you wish to put in a refund application for this year"~. As it happened I didn't, but it was nice of them to ask.

[dave holland (from livejournal.com)]

I got "have some back" letters a couple of years in a row - then they stopped sending me Tax Returns. I wondered if there was a correlation. :-) (I know you're supposed to do the sums anyway...)