A woman has spoken out after being “harassed” by HMRC for two years after the taxman wrongly claimed she owed more than £50,000 in inheritance tax – despite her paying the bill
HMRC has come under fire for allegedly “harassing” UK families for £50k inheritance tax bills that were already settled. Sarah Jones, who opted for a pseudonym when speaking to the Telegraph, shared her distress after enduring the fallout from closing her deceased father’s financial affairs.
The 63-year-old embarked on a gruelling four-year confrontation with the tax authority, eventually paying off a £56,540 inheritance tax bill in early 2021 alongside her brothers. Despite this, they found themselves tangled in a lengthy dispute with HMRC. Ms Jones described receiving an unexpected call in 2023, recounting: “I thought it was a scam.
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“Someone called us up and gave us a bank number – it could have been his for all we knew.” Despite resolving the payment, for the following two years she was besieged by letters nudging for the sum: “pay at once”.
The onslaught left her exasperated: “It was traumatic. We thought we’d put it all to bed. But then years later we had to keep discussing [my father’s] death. It felt like harassment. HMRC said we had to pay as soon as possible.”
The situation exacerbated as every attempt to rectify the misunderstanding led to hours on hold: “Every time we would phone to explain that we had paid. But it took us two hours to get through each time. We stopped reading the letters in the end because they were so ridiculous.”
Eventually, HMRC revealed the root of the problem to Ms Jones: a duplicate account registered in her name bearing a reference number only one digit off from her original account, reports Birmingham Live.
Ms Jones recounted her conversation with the customer service representative: “The person we spoke to – Matthew – was a bit sorry. He said ‘It’s now down on the system as paid and I’ll write you a letter to confirm it'”.
And when she queried about compensation, she was told: “When I asked if we would get any compensation, he said: ‘We don’t do compensation’. But I was just relieved it was all over. It was a complete balls-up.”
Tax expert Gary Rycroft weighed in on the issue, criticising HMRC’s error-prone nature and poor communication channels: “HMRC makes mistakes and also they are very difficult to communicate with.”
He voiced strong opposition to giving HMRC more power to take payments directly from bank accounts, saying, “Accordingly, any granting of power to HMRC to allow them to deduct payments directly from a taxpayer’s private bank account is not welcome.”
Rycroft also highlighted the potential for serious financial disruption and privacy concerns: “Never mind the myriad of privacy law and data protection issues, imagine on a more practical level a payment is deducted which prevents you from paying your mortgage or other important bills.
“And the months it would take to get HMRC to pay back any tax they owe you which was taken in error.”
