Reply to: HMRC Direct Recovery Powers

[JaredM]

Bump. 2,500 signatures to date. Increasing 60~80/day.

Needs 100,000 to guarantee a HoC debate.

Signed. But to get 100k votes just isn't gonna happen, most of the population are more concerned about reality TV. Sadly.

[Contreras]

You may have heard that there are proposals out from Government / HMRC to grant HMRC a so called “direct recovery” power.

In essence this would allow HMRC to debit a tax payers bank account for any unpaid tax arrears, without oversight or prior notice. There would be a stipulation that the bank balance must remain at a minimum £5,000 after the debit so as not to dip into peoples business working capital or immediate household funds, but that’s more or less the only safeguard.

These proposals cover business and personal tax debts.

Many people are very worried about these proposals. HMRC already have powers to achieve the same end via the Courts, Direct Recovery cuts out that element of oversight and due process. It could be argued its “efficiency” for HMRC, or from an opposite perspective laziness.

The accounting profession has major concerns over HMRCs administrative capability – simply there are too many erroneous assessments, mistakes and misallocations – and the bottom line is many feel this is a step to far with HMRCs powers.

There is a longer article about some of the problems on Taxations web site:

http://www.taxation.co.uk/taxation/A...dening-ripples (you should be able to read this without a login)

and a petition on the Government e-petitions web site: Withdraw the proposals to introduce direct recovery of tax debts from taxpayers

Can I urge people to consider their response to this issue and

(a) Sign the petition
(b) Highlight the issue to colleagues, family and friends
(c) Consider a letter of objection to your MP.

(cross post from https://www.whitefieldtax.co.uk/web/...sign-petition/)

Last chance for anyone that hasn't signed the petition and wants to do so - Closing: 30/03/2015 23:59

Linky:-

Withdraw the proposals to introduce direct recovery of tax debts from taxpayers’ bank accounts

[Contreras]

Bump. Reached 3,500 signatures today.

ICAEW says a resounding No to the direct recovery of debts proposals.

Tax debts: HMRC denies sidestepping the courts.

[Rob79]

Everybody, contractor or otherwise, should sign this.

Most of the professional bodies working in this area (ICAEW, CIOT, Law Society) have high profile campaigns running and are encouraging their members to sign.

Some of the more enlightened promoter houses in the film scheme and similar world are also running sign up campaigns.

Taxation magazine has a whole series of "A power too far" articles in which the great and the good (and those 17,000 specific targets that HMRC say this power is limited to) continually say what a bad idea this is.

I would encourage everybody to sign.

[mudskipper]

Signed.

Withdraw the proposals to introduce direct recovery of tax debts from taxpayers

[Contreras]

Bump. 2,500 signatures to date. Increasing 60~80/day.

Needs 100,000 to guarantee a HoC debate.

[ContrataxLtd]

CCH Article on the matter: CCH Online

Hope you can view it, not sure if you need to be signed in to read it though, sorry if you can't access it!

[MyUserName]

Done

[Sausage Surprise]

Signed...

[LisaContractorUmbrella]

This really isn't a popular idea is it Lawyers join calls to stop taxman raiding our bank accounts | Mail Online

[GlenW]

Signed.

[zippy72]

Signed, and tweeted.

[SantaClaus]

Signed. I'll post it on the BN66 forum.

[barrydidit]

I signed up.

As others have pointed out, I'd struggle to think of a less suitable organisation to have the ability to dip into a persons bank account. Without any sort of independant oversight it's a recipe for disaster. I'd also expect mission creep to gradually extend the scope of these powers once enacted and the safeguards to be diluted as time went by - a £5k safety net might be considered ok today but 10 years of inflation may render it useless.

[xoggoth]

Quite. Had two major challenges from HMRC during my contracting years and they were based on assumptions that bore no resemblance to the true situation. One would hope they would not take money from a bank without going through a proper investigation and giving the person/company involved a chance to contest it but who knows?