HMRC has again faced claims of poor organisation, after blaming late self-assessment statements on “not having enough paper”.
The latest error from the UK’s tax regulators has seen around 500,000 UK citizens being left in a state of limbo after not receiving their HMRC statements. These individuals then hastily completed their tax returns by the 31 July deadline, not knowing that HMRC had extended the deadline.
This is just another in a long line of errors that HMRC have made over the last two years. As a result there are growing concerns that the public is rapidly losing faith in the UK tax authority, especially as they themselves are known to be especially harsh when dealing with simple errors.
Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: “HMRC are in charge of telling us if we have got our self-assessment forms right but they can't even get their own stationery orders correct. The taxman appears to be in total disarray and incapable of getting anything right. This is yet another blunder in a series of idiotic mistakes. It's time someone took responsibility for this absolute mess of a department because taxpayers are rapidly losing all faith in the system.”
A spokesman for HMRC simply said: “We are very sorry for what happened. We failed to order enough of the right kind of paper because we underestimated how many more people would need these statements this year.”