HMRC & Retrospective Taxation - pushed to the brink
Hi, this is my first post and I'm coming from a somewhat different perspective as I was married to a contractor during the years in which he was in the Montpelier scheme. I am not a contractor myself per se, so I hope this post will be allowed. We have three children together and have been in the process of divorcing for over 9 years.
Everytime we start the process of disentangling our lives, we come up against the barrier of HMRC and after years of possibly burying our heads in the sand and just getting on with our separate lives and, on my part, building my own career, we have just had a horrible year of threatening and misleading letters and demands for an inordinately enormous sum, £148K and growing.
I have recently enlisted the help of my MP, I won't say who he is but he is young and a bit of a rising star. He is keen to organise a meeting with HMRC to make the payments possible and to freeze and remove the interest. My husband has corresponded at length with HMRC who take months to come back to him; all the time the interest is growing. He has filled in a statement of liabilities - unfortunately, as we have both suffered adverse fortunes in these last 9 years, he has credit card debt, i have been on the breadline practically building a business as a counsellor.
Our family home has equity but I live in it and operate my business from there. I wouldn't be able to make a living as a counsellor if I had to pay average room hire rates per session as clients generally don't want to pay much more than £35 an hour where i live. I have been feeling so alone and shamed and guilty around this for these 15 years it has been going on for - the actions of the Inland Revenue have just left me drained and despairing - it is completely inhuman.
My husband was a niche specialist worker who needed to move from contract to contract selling his technical skills - there was no disguised employment - he weathered the storm of periods of unemployment between contracts with a young family etc.., he invested in his own skillset.
My point is two fold, firstly, are there other people out there affected by this, wives, families who would like to get together in some way to support one another ? and secondly, is there enough interest amongst the contractor community to highlight what has been happening in our industry either with a good investigative journalist, blogging, campaigning or publicising what is being done? I feel a huge sense of persecution constantly and last night i was low enough to consider all kinds of options just to be away from this impossible situation.
My husband's life is being destroyed, and although we are not together, mine is too. And my children are all really struggling with GCSEs, A levels and Uni and the stress of it, although i am not sure how much they actually know, is terrible. So if there are any of you on here who would like to connect, or can think of anything constructive we can do, i would really welcome the chance to do so. If this post is not allowed, I accept that too. It was quite hard to write quite honestly.
Everytime we start the process of disentangling our lives, we come up against the barrier of HMRC and after years of possibly burying our heads in the sand and just getting on with our separate lives and, on my part, building my own career, we have just had a horrible year of threatening and misleading letters and demands for an inordinately enormous sum, £148K and growing.
I have recently enlisted the help of my MP, I won't say who he is but he is young and a bit of a rising star. He is keen to organise a meeting with HMRC to make the payments possible and to freeze and remove the interest. My husband has corresponded at length with HMRC who take months to come back to him; all the time the interest is growing. He has filled in a statement of liabilities - unfortunately, as we have both suffered adverse fortunes in these last 9 years, he has credit card debt, i have been on the breadline practically building a business as a counsellor.
Our family home has equity but I live in it and operate my business from there. I wouldn't be able to make a living as a counsellor if I had to pay average room hire rates per session as clients generally don't want to pay much more than £35 an hour where i live. I have been feeling so alone and shamed and guilty around this for these 15 years it has been going on for - the actions of the Inland Revenue have just left me drained and despairing - it is completely inhuman.
My husband was a niche specialist worker who needed to move from contract to contract selling his technical skills - there was no disguised employment - he weathered the storm of periods of unemployment between contracts with a young family etc.., he invested in his own skillset.
My point is two fold, firstly, are there other people out there affected by this, wives, families who would like to get together in some way to support one another ? and secondly, is there enough interest amongst the contractor community to highlight what has been happening in our industry either with a good investigative journalist, blogging, campaigning or publicising what is being done? I feel a huge sense of persecution constantly and last night i was low enough to consider all kinds of options just to be away from this impossible situation.
My husband's life is being destroyed, and although we are not together, mine is too. And my children are all really struggling with GCSEs, A levels and Uni and the stress of it, although i am not sure how much they actually know, is terrible. So if there are any of you on here who would like to connect, or can think of anything constructive we can do, i would really welcome the chance to do so. If this post is not allowed, I accept that too. It was quite hard to write quite honestly.
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