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

[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...)