With the amount of errors that are processed every year for tax rebates or follow-ups, do we REALLY want to give the IR the right to rip the cash straight out of the accounts?

Would this apply to over-paid child benefits that the IR is trying to claw back due to their own idiocy and incompetence? I've heard stories of hard-up parents finding that they need to repay £1000+ because they were overpaid in the previous year.

What are the safeguards here?!?

Think: catchy 4-letter abbreviation; plenty of money to work with already; huge engine of bureaucracy underpinning them; thousands of bean-counting staff.

I can't wait to see the ads:

Switch your account to HMRC. No more problems with self assessment, we'll do it for you and manage the payment process on your behalf!

Tax problems? Move your savings account to HMRC and never miss another deadline!

VAT. It's fiendishly complex - but we understand it better than anyone, so switch your current account to HMRC and your worries will be banished!

OK, I admit it - nobody understands the VAT system really, but still... could catch on!

Annoying though it may be for all of us minions who, through the wonders of PAYE, don't get a chance to owe HMRC anything, to see blatant tax evasion, especially on the scale of private equity fatcats recently, allowing a civil service agency to set the law and become the law inasmuch as they would become judge, jury and executioner. I do believe that Uncle Joe would have been proud of the way individuality and individual worth has been insidiously steamrollered into non-existence under the McMafia currently occupying our country.

Obviously this would never apply if you're one of fat Jock's favoured or cronies...

Ted, I can assure you that PAYE does give you a chance for everything to go all out of kilter - luckily at the moment it's in my favour (I work overseas for 5 months), so they end up owing me money.

Question: If they have the right to take the money without asking, does that mean they will also give rebates without having to be asked?

If only the answer wasn't so predictable...

After spending 4 months this year arguing with HMRC because I had paid my tax and they said I hadn't it turning out that the tax i had paid them was sitting on my PAYE account when it should have been sitting on my Self Assessment account.... (Why they don't just lump all the tax I pay into 1 account I don't know)

Suffice to say if these new powers had been in force they would have just ripped all the tax I paid this year out of my bank account again and i would have been royally shafted despite paying all the money I should have paid.

This had better not come to pass, it will affect thousands, most of which probably won't be able to afford it....

A public consultation! Especially for the Government to ignore.

In 3 months' time:

"We have consulted widely and received widespread support."

What they got "support" for was the *consultation*, and most of that was "FFS you can't *do* that because x, y and z are obvious negative consequences which outweigh the pluspoints by elvelty billion percent and here are the numbers to prove it!"

Just like every other public consultation. Or they'll withdraw it for a bit, make a low-key announcement amounting to the same thing and shove it through on the sly.

Excuse me, my cynicism appears to be hanging out.

How the hell is that fair to other organisations "owed money" - nobody else can just go and rip the money right out and have to fight for it - and they've often much smaller and can less afford to chase for it. Unbelieveable

HMRC recently screwed up on my partnership tax return, and demanded £100 from each of the three partners. I refrained from the middle-finger response, and after a surprisingly calm and reasonable correspondence, the charges were cancelled when someone at HMRC admitted fault.

What would have happened under these rules? They would have nicked the £300, no questions asked. And if I wasn't paying attention to my account, I might not have noticed at all. (A lot goes in and out.) It could well be the case that I would have never gotten my money back. I'll bet you anything it'd take a day for them to take the money, but 6 weeks to return it.

No, no, no, no, no. The courts are there for a reason - to hear evidence and make a judgement.

What on earth is the problem with HMRC getting a court order? Why should they be singled out to skip this essential bit of due process? In cases where the court order is granted then there is no merit in this proposal, so they are seeking this power precisely to evade scrutiny in cases where court orders would get turned down.

Disgraceful.

Why is it that recent solutions to alleged problems are so determined to avoid legal process?

Are the rights of the citizen really that irritating to Government that they just want to take them away?

HMRC has a trick they do, they know I'm not resident, but they send a bill for 'estimated' taxes to my last address and a deadline to refute the charge. So according to the letter, if I don't challenge the bill within 3 months then I automatically accept it. It's not small money they want either, it's 4k-7k at a time.

This is quite tricky since I come back to the UK once a year, or once every other year sometimes, but so far I've been lucky and sent back the dispute form back to them before the deadline.

I always wondered, if I failed to send the form back whether they really would have a legal basis for taking the money from me anyway. I doubt it, they don't send the letters recorded delivery, and they have record that I'm not resident, so I don't think they'd risk trying for a judgment. I assume the judge would refuse this speculative bill.

If they remove the courts from the loop I wonder how that works then, do they just help themselves to any bank account they can find?

You guys with PAYE don't know the fun you're missing with HMGov. Your mistakes result in automatic fines, but their mistakes don't count. If they mistakenly think you owe a fine, then you owe a fine! The burden of proof is on you to prove you don't!

Then there's the VAT, if a supplier requires prepayment, but issues the invoice later when they ship the goods to you, you still have to pay VAT without being able to claim the VAT from the supplier invoice until the next quarter. Cash accounting doesn't cover this, because it's supply side. That one bit me in the ass once. With the VAT office seizing my fax machine, laser printer and other office furniture in lieu of payment.

I have low respect for UK public bodies, they don't seem to be very accountable in the UK.

The next thing you know, you'll be be visited by "Police" and given concrete boots and a dip in the lake for not paying what you "owe".....

British law used to have a presumption of innocence until guit was proven. Looks like the Revenue want to reverse that, they can punish you first, until you go to court to prove yourself innocent. And of course by then you may not have any money left to bring the case...

And they should extend this service to MPs as well... that way when MPs illegally embezzle money and/or items and put them through as cash expenses (anything under £3000 a time is OK?) and neglect to declare tax or any interest or anything their accounts can be siezed.

Shame I can't see it happening though. But if I ran my business by saying "it's a cash expense of £1200, there is no receipt", the tax inspector would be over me like a rash.

Can I first ask that you don't blame the general staff.

We have to work under the laws passed by the Government and in an organisation which is being destroyed by it's own masters and board.

The vast majority of staff really want to help you but are constrained by what is happening to the department. We remember the days when we were taught it was about making sure people "paid the right amount of tax at the right time" and that was the same with repayments, we also believed in "whole case working" whereby we didn't just deal with the query you had but we looked at your tax affairs as a whole and made sure everything was right.

If you want a better HMRC by all means complain about the legislation and the Government of the times actions, but even better why not support the HMRC staff and their union, the PCS in their current dispute with the HMRC Board and treasury. We are not only after better pay and conditions for ourselves but a better service for you. If we have the right amount of staff doing the right jobs with the right logistics then you would have your query answered correctly and competely in the shortest amount of time.

And if you think the HMRC is bad take a look at the other Government departments, they like us are being destroyed and they like the HMRC are your public services.

I'm sure you'll understand why I'm posting this anonymously, personally I don't want to be one of the approx 100,000 Civil Servants to lose their job.

Welcome to the new British Police State, initiated with the Election of Tony Blair some ten years ago ,

For in this country , we do not allow sight seeing tourists(they may be spies?) , our Naval Submarines have been instructed to ram and sink any unarmed innocent fishing trawlers , and leave the crews to drown , and if the salvaged sunken vessel just happens to have paint flakes in the hole that is a special unique naval grey as used by the HM Submarines it comes from a unknown Russian Spy Submarine on patrol!

Our newly armed Gestapo like police force have been instructed to shoot to kill any foreign guest workers without provocation and can do so without fear of sanction or punishment for any mistakes!

Our Government press liaison spokes people , are instructed only to tell lies and allow both the Print Media and TV Reporters to endlessly speculate and spout worthless propaganda, and under no circumstances even when in possession of correct and truthful information they are not permitted to reign in this circus!

Our Banks are required to disclose all customer information , without due legal process irrespective of privacy laws and surrender all customers cash without duly informing same!

Say this reminds me of a certain recently reunited country late last century in Europe circa 1935! , run by a man called Adolf.

Looks like both Joseph Stalin and Adolph Hitler are now smiling in their graves , for the monsters they created last century are being reborn anew in the United Kingdom if truth be told!

If this becomes part and parcel of the laws of the land then 1984 is no longer a work of fiction but one which accurately predicted the future!

I can see both sides of the argument, but as this government over the years has increasingly nailed the self-employed and the employed with pointless tax initiatives... i.e. working tax credits fiasco (in one hand and out of the other). I think it's about time that the powers that be woke up to reality. All weel and good raiding someone's bank account.... only to find you didn't do your home work properly in the first place.... and then keeping the said money. Don't fool yourself... the government will keep it even though if it's their mistake

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20070705/tuk-uk-britain-tax-fa6b408.html

i have known about 10 people so far in the 7 years of my working life that have been taken for BR tax for a year or more, then it takes oh about 2 years to get your money back but oh by the way the tax lot dont give you intrest on the money they have been making intrest on for them 2 years while you where trying to get it back...

but shock they expect intrest on anything you owe them!!! so people are forced to live with next to feck all while it gets sorted.. no wounder some people dont bother working.....

so ok if they can take it from your bank can you do the same??? i would think not as they want the intrest on the massive amounts they have wrongly in their accounts..

The comments on here seriously worry me, not so much about the government and the HMRC, that's fair enough how ever misguided and lacking facts, but comments like...

"our Naval Submarines have been instructed to ram and sink any unarmed innocent fishing trawlers"

With idiots like this, the Register has become the new Wikipedia.