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Inland Revenue vendatta : let's catch the crooks

Inland Revenue vendatta : let's catch the crooks -

The Inland Revenue is currently persecuting doctors. It may be that this is a government inspired vendatta to try to claw back some of the money paid out to consultants and GPs over the last few years. They have not gone for me, yet, nor for anyone in my practice. They are, however, investigating Mrs Crippen as regards her motoring expenses.

Neither Mrs Crippen nor I know much about tax. We have both heard about “duality of purpose” though.  If you own a car, and use it for travelling between hospitals, for on call duties, and also for running the children to school, and for holidays, rightly and properly you cannot claim all your motoring expenses against tax. But how much can you claim? Neither of us has a clue. So, we employ an accountant who specialises in doctors. We give him the details of our car expenses, and tell him what use we make of the cars for work and for “social and domestic” purposes. He tells us what percentage of our motoring expenses we can fairly claim, and that is what we do. And have done for twenty years. And it has never been challenged. 

Now it is being challenged by the Inland Revenue. The correspondence has been going backwards and forwards for eighteen months. We have spent hours closeted with the accountant. Mrs Crippen has had some rude letters from somebody fairly low down in the Tax Office. So rude, in fact, that our accountant has made a formal complaint about them. It has been and still is a very stressful experience, particularly as there is the underlying inference of dishonesty.
The stupid think about it all is that the amount of money in dispute is only a few hundred pounds a year. Yes, yes, I know, count the pennies, we should all pay what is due, you should not evade tax and so on. We agree. Which is why we have always been meticulous about taking proper advice on a subject about which we know nothing, and following the advice. If it turns out that the advice given by our accountant over twenty years is wrong, that is going to have repercussions for the several thousand clients for whom he acts. The Crippens do not evade tax. Frankly, we are so disorganised that (and we now know this from the detailed audits the accountant has just done) we do not even avoid tax liability. We have not claimed for other things for which we could have claimed. We will be doing that now. Whatever the Inland Revenue decides on the motoring expenses, they will be the net losers. But that will not matter. They will have hit their target.
What point am I trying to make? I know a few of the usual suspects will write in and say “fat cat” doctors are overpaid and should be paying more tax. That is not relevant. What we need, above all, is certainty. Which is what, incorrectly, we thought we had. We may end up having to pay a few hundred pounds (plus interest) to the Inland Revenue. How much will collecting this money have cost the taxpayer? That’s not relevant, you may say. Tax should be paid. Fine. But remember, because the tax offices are in the public sector, time costs are ignored. So it is OK to spend ten thousand pounds to recover one hundred pounds. It’s the principle.

For the time being, the stress continues. Background current affairs, Fred the Shred’s tax-paid pension, the bank bails-out and so on, are all very irritating. But what is this morning making Mrs Crippen choke over her cornflakes is Tony McNulty MP.

Mr McNulty accepted that his use of taxpayers' money for the property looked odd. The employment minister is the latest MP to be caught claiming the Common's controversial "additional costs allowance" for a property that is not strictly his home.

Mr McNulty lives with his wife Christine Gilbert in a house she owns in Hammersmith, three miles from Westminster. Yet the minister has been claiming up to £14,000 a year in parliamentary expenses to help pay for another house he owns in Harrow, 11 miles from the Commons, in which his parents live.

The MP can claim the money because the house is in his Harrow constituency and so qualifies him for the second home allowance. After the arrangement was disclosed by the Mail on Sunday this weekend, Mr McNulty announced that he had decided to stop claiming the money, which he has benefited from since becoming an MP in 1997

Daily Telegraph

This odious little crook has been caught with his hand in the till. As soon as he was caught, he took his hand out. He is a fruadster. He should resign. He should be in court. MPs expenses are a national disgrace. Most of them may be “at it” but that is not the point. It is a question of honesty.

A former minister has admitted that MPs view the maximum £23,000 they can claim in second-home expenses as a "target to be aimed for" and not as a way of repaying "legitimate" costs.

The remarks by Chris Mullin, a Labour member of the all-party standards and privileges committee, amount to the first admission by an MP that the much-criticised Additional Cost Allowance is seen as something to which they are automatically entitled.

Daily Telegraph

Mrs Crippen’s parents are in their eighties now. Perhaps she should start claiming travelling expenses for the frequent visits she makes to see them.

[NHS Blog Doctor]