HM Revenue and Customs failures

The taxman has recently handed itself sweeping new powers to deduct £17,000 from British workers, it has been announced.

HM Revenue & Customs will be able to take up to £17,000 from pay packets – compared to the current limit of £3,000. It will target those who it claims have underpaid income tax, capital gains tax or National Insurance contributions.

These new civil forfeiture powers have been described as ‘draconian and regressive’ by industry bodies, while others have accused HMRC of acting as ‘judge, jury and executioner’.

Yesterday Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, said: “This is another creeping of HMRC’s powers, which are skewed in favour of themselves and away from the taxpayers. HMRC is becoming a more confrontational and all-powerful organisation.”

These new powers comes just months after HMRC announced that they will be able to recover unpaid tax from bank and building society accounts without going through the courts.

Officials want to be able to take funds directly from current accounts, joint accounts or ISAs.

It will also be able to take disputed tax upfront from small businesses and individuals before a case is heard in court.

In addition, it awarded itself new powers to deduct the legal costs of a court case from your account before any judgment has been made.

These new laws will allow HMRC to operate in a very similar way to the IRS in America which has been at the centre of scandals where families have been forced into homelessness after having their bank accounts raided.

It would also leave individuals without the ability to pay for a lawyer – because their accounts and assets would have been frozen.

In the United States, civil forfeiture laws have created a situation whereby a property owner need not be found guilty of a crime—or even charged—to permanently lose her cash, car, home, or other property.

Police departments are also given incentives to seize property in this way – as the spoils are then shared out among law enforcement departments.

In 2010, the Institute for Justice, produced a report entitled “Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture”.

 The report claimed that most state laws are written in such a way as to encourage police agents to pursue profit instead of seeking the neutral administration of justice. It ranked each state and the federal government on its forfeiture laws and other measures of abuse. The results are concerning: Six states earned an F and 29 states and the federal government received a grade of D.

These new powers that HMRC have awarded itself mark yet another worrying step towards creating a similar situation in the UK. It could also pave the way for other organisations such as energy companies and debt recovery firms to do the same.

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