Was it always this bad? I suspect it might have been but not having to access too many government agencies in the past perhaps I just wasn’t aware of just how useless they are. On Friday I had two examples of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was up to if indeed the left hand even knew that there was a right hand.
Firstly, we had a letter from HM Revenue and Customs chastising SeamStress Ltd for failing to pay the employee’s share of tax (PAYE in the UK) and insisting that we forward a small fortune immediately or face prosecution if not castration. Fortunately, SeamStress filed the necessary paper work back in April to sack all its employees and insist that they become self-employed. SeamStress Ltd. itself is about to be wound up now that the company financial year has finished (31 July). I suspect you will remember all this but unfortunately the Revenue doesn’t, in spite of having previously sent confirmation that Ms Playchute herself is now obliged to pay her National Insurance personally and that it will no longer be paid by SeamStress Ltd. This required a phone call to the Revenue’s fine offices in Glasgow where we spoke with a lovely lady with an impenetrable Scottish accent who eventually accepted what we told her. (An aside: because the company is registered in Penny’s name she must give approval for the Revenue to speak with me, which we have done three or four times in the past. Nevertheless, every time we have cause to speak with them they insist on asking Penny to come to the phone, identify herself and then authorise me to speak on her behalf. So, on Friday we were proceeding through this pantomime when the lady at the other end asked, apparently, for Penny’s son’s name. Somewhat perplexed, Penny enquired why HM Revenue and Customs needed our son’s name (and, I suppose, which son did they want the name of?). In fact, it turns out that the impenetrable accent was asking her to confirm her surname). Continue reading “14 August 2011”