T-Bird Anni Rides Again

I just got my latest TMA back and I got 74%   Could possibly have got more if i’d read the unit properly first as I missed a whole passage that related really well to the third part of the essay!  Typically, I’m going to miss the next tutorial (again!) cos I hvae better things to do with my Saturdays than take the train into Manchester and sit in lecture with a bunch of grown ups who take life seriously when I could be drinking tea with friends!

It’s taht anual tax credt debacle time of year again.  I have obviously blanked out the full glory of last year’s debacle as I don’t remember certain pertinant points as raised by the supercillious prat I spoke to just now.  I don’t, for instance, remember being told that I was breaking the law by not having provided information on who we are both working for although aparently this information was requested and (to quote him) "it looks like the conversation didn’t end well last time either" by which I assume I am on file as being a stroppy cow (coo, even people who don’t know me have worked that one out!)  Although I do remember when Duke was in and out of work, being permenantly on the phone to this most delightful of agencies to update tehm on who was employing him on what salary for that particular week, or not, as the case may be.  I quite distinctly remember having them on speed dial.  I also quite distinctly remember receiving tax credits last year in proportion to our income and thus would assume that therefore they are perfectly capable of processing a claim without these details.

Aparently this year they can’t process my claim without up to date and also fully backdated to the beginning-of-time employment records.  There is no reference to an employer on my current circumstances detail sheet for me to check and confirm or deny the correctness thereof, although if you plow through the copious notes they send it does say taht you need to tell them when you change job.  What they have on file is not any of the employers I can remember him working for over the past several years.  Not that they will tell me what employer they have recorded because that would be breaking the data protection act, neither will they disclose the date that this employment started other than it was longer than 2 years ago.  When I pointed out that under the very same Data Protection Act of which he spoke I had a right to know any details held about me he sounded vaguely surprised taht I would know about such petty details and said I could write requesting a full disclosure of all the data they held.  Funny how he offered that info only after I threw the law back in his face and not when i asked for it politely  so that I could at least sort this out (and I asked in several ways ranging from "oh, right, what details do you hvae then?" to "well, is there any way I can get hold of the information so I can check if it is correct or not then?" all of which were denied.)  In the mean time of course, Duke’s money has gone down from a half decent £22k last year (working 2 jobs) to around £13k this year.  Funnily enough, it was when I mentioned that huge money drop that suddenly it became important that they had employer details, presumably they need to contact them and say "how dare you pay such crap wages and make the government top it up to a livable wage" (shall we gloss over the fact that if they made the national minimum wage a livable wage then they wouldn’t need to? although, naturally, if both of us were good little workers on NMW it would actually be almost livable) or maybe more like "is your employee lying about his income"

But you know, what really pisses me off is that this is part HM Revenue and Customs.  That’s the people who gather our taxs and thus the people who know, to the last penny, how much any person in the UK has earned in the past 12 months.  Not to mention they know who anyone is working for at any one time (assuming the company is above board, not paying cash in hand etc obviously)  So how is it that the information can’t go from one office to another without all this pratting about?  I mean, I can do my car tax on line, they check on a database of insured vehicles and on a database of MOT’ed vehicles instantly and seemingly effortlessly then plunder your bank account (which is, in effect another database for them to access) to take the money for your car tax, how then is is so hard to look on just one database for a person’s income  and top it up accordingly FFS?????