Bureaucracy with a tinge of Madness

I was concerned by the no doubt well-meaning scam warnings given above, particularly as when trying to access my PTA I now don't receive the promised SMS and can't get access.

Like Samsaranda I am fairly confident I initially applied via the correct official route - see my earlier post. I am not surprised to find from the HMRC customer forum that many others have had problems with this process (which is still in beta form):

Unfortunately, getting a problem-specific answer from HMRC is not easy and because of the involvement of the private sector they both have a perfect buck-passing mechanism - bureaucratic perpetual motion.

HMRC would send me a £100 penalty every year claiming late filing, only to refund it on appeal, even though the forms were in on time. BUT DVLA, if you are renewing your driving licence on line at age 70 you will LOOSE many catagories ! You have to have a medical to retain ALL the catagories ! Paid£50 for a 5 min consultation with a doctor I had never seen before 50miles away, then POST the forms . That I held a PROPER valid marine medical that checked everything didn't count ! Noel.

Not sure if the HMRC is immune from prosecution but, if not, were they not "attempting to obtain a pecuniary advantage by deception" ie theft?

It may be that the necessary criminal intent is lacking but if it's done year after year ...

Of course, any fine would effectively be paid by you and me.

Used to use an expired one year passport as POI at a bank close to where I worked, distant to "Home" bank but essential for cash withdrawals at lunchtime. First time I used it, got into a "Discussion" with the bank clerk re the validity of it. My argument was that there was a stamped, certified and sealed photo on the document together with full residence details. One question asked was "Have you got a Gas/Water/Electricity bill with you?" My reply being "The Photo is a good likeness?" "Who says a none photographic document is proof I didn't go bin raiding?"

First time, Manager had to verify to clerk it was ok. No problem on subsequent visits.

Still smarting after the legal theft of £7500 TAX from a pension.

Regards Ian.

The only reason I can suggest for the NI Driving Licence being accepted is the Irish DVA requires stronger proof of identity before issuing a licence than mainland DVLA does. But looking at the DVLA and DVA websites suggests the opposite is true. Maybe it's because the NI system has been completely tightened to current standards whereas many mainland licences are blind renewals of old ones issued back when a driving licence wasn't proof of identity.

As money and personal data is involved, HMRC should certainly demand solid proof of identity before opening accounts. I'd go ballistic if it was easy for someone to open a PTA in my name!

My guess is it's a cock-up. Probably best to avoid a government website that's emitting the same signals as a spammer.

Never a good idea to launch beta websites too early, but thorough testing is expensive. Most government departments have been subjected to a decade plus of cuts. In pursuit of savings, HRMC lost about 40% of their staff following replacement of 150 local offices by 13 regional centres. The National Audit Office was critical of this project, saying the original reorganisation plan was unrealistic due to moving or replacing too many staff too quickly while delivering 14 other major change programmes, and that the scale of disruption involved was underestimated. Not sure what the current position is, but the 13 Regional Centres turned out to be more expensive than the 150 Local Offices they replaced, which probably means the Business Case was wrong. So a few years of turmoil and annoyed customers for little benefit, at least so far.

Dave

I think the key here may be that they are forcing you to give them permission to run a credit check on you - for life. Lots of lovely data about you to process and sell.
Even if your passsprot is expired it should be valid for some things as the number remains unique to you for traceability. However I'm not sure of the cost of renewing it which might eat up a substantial part of your £100 anyway.

Many thanks for all your responses which illustrate a varied spectrum of experiences with HMRC and other government departments. Dave W

I have just seen a reference to an HMRC web page about tax scams:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/phishing-and-bogus-emails-hm-revenue-and-customs-examples/phishing-emails-and-bogus-contact-hm-revenue-and-customs-examples#tax-refund-and-rebate-scams

It's rather general but does not suggest that scammers are writing letters as opposed to emailing, phoning or texting.

I don't think this particular page has been mentioned above and, in any event, it may be worth repeating.

Thanks to SOD for his factual post.

Thanks for that ega, The letter that I referred to as having received was definitely from HRMC it had a breakdown of all my tax liabilities with my pensions so definitely not a scammer, and my access on line was definitely through the gov.UK portal, I can only assume the problems that I encountered trying to verify my identity are down to stupidity in the setting up of the access criteria, unfortunately not that unusual nowadays when dealing with government departments. Dave W

There is a variant (yes, like a pathogen) on the pretent-HMRC trick. This happened to me recently when the message did not try to clain to be from the department, but from an agent.

It promised me about £1100 in underpaid Marriage Allowance (I have never been married and girl-friends don't count) in return for my wife's and my NI numbers and level of earnings.

The site looked impressive: two big blue link buttons, and a photo of a couple at the altar... dead give-aways apart from being so unlikely and not pretending to be HMRC, were the sender's peculiar open and "bounce" addresses.

Block sender, block domain, delete....

Only that will not stop them because the criminals have adopted an anti-blocking, anti-tracing technique using multiple but temporary, random name.domain paths for each message, and I have received several in the last few days.

Yesterday they sent three copies of the same message headed "Costumer [sic] Notice" or similar by this method, with individual open and "bounce" addresses, within minutes of each other; and this morning I received another, pretending to be an very unlikely voucher offer from the Morrisons supermarket.

The only defence would seem to be to make all e-mails text and photos only by default, blocking all links and operating-files unless by specific permission. A web-site could be cited, but its name would be inactive, but its user would need only type the name in the search tool as usual.

Frances -

I for one find that rather offensive.

Falling for a scam out of naivety, or momentary lapse of concentration, is one thing; but not all of us deeply understand computer languages and operating-systems, nor should we need to.

HTMLl? Javascript? Allowing their interpretation? How many people who spend their evenings watching their television, know how a TV works?

I found out that payouts form the DWP do not exceed £5000, so they will if the payout is more than £5000 they split the payments.

If you are looking for a set figure that is above £5000 in your Bank acct. payed by DWP then look for two figures that add up to the figure you are looking for. Payments will list your Nat Ins. number as the source.

Haha, I‘ve just had a phone message that informed me I was about to lose my NI number and be arrested for dodgy monetary transactions if I did not press a number key on my phone. Different - and the first ever on my mobile phone (it’s often not turned on). I’m waiting to be arrested.🙂

Noel,

You obviously had a cheap doctor to go to. It cost me £120. Luckily I was able to persuade the optician to do the eye test bit FOC.

I may not have used the C1 D1 entitlement for some length of time, but I do not see why I should lose it automatically.

Colin

Why not save them from themselves by offering a few tips on avoiding this folly?

Colin, My own doctor would also have charged £120 and a date about 3 months hence, I could not wait that long and it was obvious he didn't want to do it ! His receptionist gave me the number for Dfor Drivers, within days it was done for £50 and my eye test was free. Best wishes Noel.

Frances Iom, My field of Knowledge is engineering NOT computers so HTML and javascript mean nothing to me ! Are you suggesting that since I know little of computers I should not use one ? In this day and age it will soon be impossible to conduct life without some computer use ! Noel.

Edited By Frances IoM on 25/06/2021 18:44:27

I tried to get my personal tax account access a year ago when I got the same letter about a refund. I also got blocked at the proof of identity stage and gave up in disgust, waited a number of weeks, then received a cheque in the post. A little later in the year I got another letter from them saying I had underpaid tax and they were going to reclaim it by adjusting the next tax code. I do wish they could do their sums properly and stop annoying us.

Doug

I have grave doubts that those who collect our taxes can grasp simple mathematics, every year I get a refund of overpaid tax, sometimes £100 as has happened this year, sometimes as much as £400 or £500, surely as they know every penny of my pensions then they can work out how much tax needs to be collected, perhaps their calculators are programmed differently to everyone else’s. Dave W