12/16/2006

Inland Revenue cocks up - It happened to me too

The BBC reports that the Inland Revenue has sent out hundreds of thousands of letters telling peeple there is a gap in their National Insurance payments and that they owe £371 or they miss out on pension benefits. Read the story HERE.

It is amazing it has taken so long for this to come to light as I received a letter two months ago telling me this. When I phoned my employer to get a duplicate P60, they told me that this has happened to dozens of people.

The BBC estimate here is that 4.7 million people were sent such letters. I have since then received a letter telling me that everything is now okay, but just try working out the cost of postage of nine millions letters (two to each person) and the printing costs, and this error may well have cost about £4.5 million pounds.

If the Inland Revenue knew these letters werre going out in error, why didn't they stop them ?

3 comments:

Mark Valladares said...

Nich,

You really don't want the answer to that question do you...

Nich Starling said...

Yes, it was a rhetorical question.

Mark Valladares said...

Nich,

Well, in that case... when my gallant employers (I work for HM Revenue & Customs) need to issue a large run, a slot needs to be booked for it (we have a contract for these things). Once everything is in place, you can't stop it, without causing a delay until the next 'slot' becomes available. And that could be some time away...

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