Following up on this one (see post from 8th April) I had not received a reply to my registered letter after two months and I had also received a new letter from another tax office to say that my mother had underpaid for the previous tax year.
I rang the Taxes Helpline 0845 3000 627. They told me that there were not able to talk to me as I am not the registered power of attorney and they were not able to tell me who the registered power of attorney was. I'm assuming that this is my brother although we have joint power of attorney so HMRC had no right in law to register him as sole contact.
I told them that the reason that I was calling was to follow up my registration as power of attorney and to find out why they had not returned the Power of Attorney document that I had sent two months earlier (as this was the original document I had sent it registered post and asked in the covering lettter for it to be returned as soon as possible).
They still refused to discuss this with me and said that they had no way of contacting the office that I had written to. I told them that my brother is now forwarding all letters from them to me unopened and that as they would not accept that I have power of attorney I would not be able to act for my mother any more or file any more tax returns for her until they recognize my power of attorney and update their address records.
I turned out that they had returned the Power of Attorney document a month after they received it - to the wrong address of course.
From this I conclude that it's best to not send any original copies of important documents to HMRC as their administration is very poor. Next I am going to write to them to formally give notice that due to their lack of action no-one is now acting on my mother's behalf with regards to tax matters and that no further returns will be filed until they correct this.
No comments:
Post a Comment