How one family were brought to their knees by the taxman
I don’t mind telling you that I get a lot of flack from tax professionals who don’t like what I’m saying: articles like Dirty Tricks “worry people needlessly”, and What HMRC Don’t Want You to Know “blow things out of proportion”.
Well it’s just not true.
HMRC’s bullying approach – well I see it over and over again – and here it is: they don’t worry about actual evidence if they have a “gut feeling” something is wrong, then – later – they don’t like to admit mistakes, so that drives them harder. If – they feel – they just push a bit more somebody will crack or some evidence will appear.
Many do crack under the pressure, I know of cases where people who are innocent of fraud give in and pay what’s been demanded just to stop the stress. But not everybody gives up, and here’s a story from a family that took HMRC on and won.
The Telegraph covered the story, see below.
How one family were brought to their knees by the taxman
One businessman tells how his life was destroyed after being wrongly accused of fraud by the HMRC.
Rick Hone will never forget the morning of February 5, 2009. “I was in the car when I got a phone call from the office. The voice at the other end of the line was hysterical. I couldn’t really understand what was happening. I just knew I needed to get back to base immediately.
When he returned to Abbey Forwarding in Woolwich, London, the drinks warehousing business of which he had been a director for five years, he was shocked by what he saw.
”There were about 20 officers from HMRC [Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the tax authorities],” he remembers.
“Some of them were already changing the locks on the doors. Others were going through the company’s documents and computers, packing them up to take them away.”
One officer came up to Mr Hone and told him: “You owe over £5million in taxes. You can’t pay it. The company will be closed down to protect the creditors.”
