JANET STREET

Release time：2024-04-19 23:11:48 Source：Culture Curves news portal

I'm not afraid of anyone- with one exception. Tax inspectors.

Here's why I've lost sleep, developed eczema, and been forced to pay out thousands of pounds to financial advisors. All thanks to HMRC. The nightmare started when a letter arrived out of the blue four years ago claiming I had underpaid my taxes every year back to 2014.

I was ordered to produce every receipt, record of payment, and contract my company had received since then, to answer over 50 questions at a time (only about my appearances on Loose Women) about how I work and my daily routine. It took days to answer them all, and then I received another list. The questions ranged from 'who tells you what to say?' to 'how do you prepare?' They asked about what I wore and how I travelled to and from work.

Providing all this information has been an enormous task - as a freelance journalist, broadcaster and media performer, I work for dozens of different organisations in a single year. But the tax people only wanted to know about Loose Women!

Janet Street Porter says tax officials only wanted to ask about her role on ITV's Loose Women

She is seen her on the TV programme's panel last month with physiotherapist Victoria Cilliers

I was accused of underpaying tax to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds, even though I had records showing I'd paid all my tax on time, kept immaculate accounts and prided myself on my honesty.

I felt as if the HMRC had popped me in the same bracket as a tax-evading billionaire - yet I am a pensioner who has never owned a single share, I don't have a fancy yacht or a bolt hole in a tax haven. I own two clapped-out second hand cars - one's a Fiat Panda, hardly a bloody Lamborghini!

My main 'crime' was to be the sole employee of my own limited company, and HMRC have decided to focus in particular on TV presenters as potential tax evaders. I have since discovered that thousands of successful small businesses, from plumbers to electrical contractors and graphic designers, have been subjected to this reign of terror.

HMRC are convinced that small companies are fiddling tax and are spending millions hounding Britain's most creative and productive workers in order to force them onto PAYE and close their companies down. Scandalous, as it is Britain's small businesses which our economy needs so badly if it is to thrive.

HMRC itself is a malfunctioning, mysterious organisation - one we confront at our peril as they alone decide how much tax we should pay, and when we should pay it.

The way they work is utterly incomprehensible, the decisions they make are cruel and unfair, and if you dare to question them, matters will only get worse.

In their eyes, we are all tax evaders and shysters until proved otherwise. The UK has one of the most complex tax systems in any civilised country, and one of the least productive workforces trying to enforce the rules. The Parliamentary Accounts committee accused HMRC recently of spending vast sums 'chasing trivial amounts of money'.

The number of successful prosecutions they have secured has plummeted from 691 in 2019-20 to just 240 in 2022-23.

The large, state-of-the-art office building called Ty William Morgan in Cardiff is meant to be the base for 4,000 HMRC employees but the Mail found many are instead working from home

A glance through the towering glass windows of Ty William Morgan suggested that significant portions of the building were almost entirely empty

EXCLUSIVEREAD MORE: Are these the laziest WFH staff in Britain? HMRC civil servants are gardening, taking the dog for a walk and playing video games while 'at work', reveals GUY ADAMS. Meanwhile taxpayers face year-long waits... and a £100m office lies half empty 

A Freedom of Information request revealed that tax inspectors mistakenly overpaid their own staff over £12million over the last 10 years, and although most of the money was recovered, over £300,000 has gone missing.

The department has even LESS people working in the office than during the first Covid lockdown. 

When the Daily Mail's Guy Adams visited the HMRC's showpiece office in Cardiff the other day, he found that only 976 people out of a potential workforce of 4500 turned up. Some were wearing shorts and dressed for the beach rather than the suits and jackets one might expect, given the sums of money they are trying to extract from their customers.

Try to phone up their helpline and you'll be hanging on for 25 minutes. Write a letter - and wait months for a reply.

Customer service is a dirty word to HMRC. They have so little regard for their customers that they even proposed closing down their customer phone lines COMPLETELY until the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, intervened.

The department has spent £82million on laptops, tablets and phones for staff to work from home, no wonder they are so reluctant to go into the office.

For the last four years, I've been living in fear since receiving that first demand. After I supplied one lot of information, I received another demand for alleged 'underpayment' and another list of questions. And so it went on, with the sum demanded sailing past £100,000. There were threats of court hearings, which I had to apply to have paused.

I felt I was like Alice in Wonderland. Everything was in a language I didn't understand. I needed specialist tax advice from ex-tax inspectors who knew the lingo to fight back.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt intervened to stop HMRC closing phonelines until October

Janet Street Porter has compared her tax wrangles to Alice In Wonderland - pictured here is a scene from the Disney film adaptation of Lewis Carroll's books

READ MORE: Taxman's 'VIP lane' sees top earners including ministers get their calls to HMRC answered NINE times faster than ordinary Brits 

My accountant spent hours combing through my records to answer all the enquiries. The whole exercise has caused huge stress, I had to save as much money as I could in case I lost my case.

What I couldn't understand was why HMRC needed to hound a single pensioner (me). Was it simply because I am a well-known face on television? Because they were only ever intent on claiming I was a 'worker' rather than a freelance. They were not bothered with my other work, which takes up far more of my time.

They were not concerned that I had built a reputation for honest journalism and knowledge of my area of expertise (media) going back 50 years,

Other TV presenters like Lorraine Kelly, Eamonn Holmes and my fellow Loose Woman, Kaye Adams have all been through this costly process. I refused to fight it out in court, because that would have cost even more money, and if I lost, I would have to pay my own expenses.

In the end, I admitted defeat- I told HMRC, I would settle. They added up the tax they say I should have paid to them through PAYE since 2014- set against all the other taxes I have paid through my company.

After hundreds of hours of investigation by at least four case workers and tax inspectors. Dozens of letters and questions answered. They reckoned I owed just FOUR THOUSAND POUNDS.

It has cost me over £60,000 in specialist advice so the only winners are accountants.

I want to ask HMRC if pursuing a 77 year old women for four years for four thousand pounds is really an effective use of their time and their undoubted tax expertise?

Lorraine Kelly overturned a £1.2million tax bill in 2019 after a court ruled that the television presenter was 'self employed' while working for ITV

TV presenter Eamonn Holmes has said he had to sell his house after losing two appeals against HM Revenue and Customs over a £250,000 tax bill

Janet's fellow Loose Women panellist Kaye Adams won a 10-year battle with HMRC in January over a disputed £124,000 tax bill after it decided not to appeal her latest court victory

Ironically, my mother worked as a clerical assistant at the Tax office in Holland Park, West London (she lied about her exam results to get the job) when I was at grammar school. When she flew off for her summer break, I took over as temporary holiday relief.

There were files everywhere, down the back of radiators, on the floor, and in stacks in the corridors. I spent many happy hours reading the contents when I wasn't failing to master the switchboard.

I had signed the Official Secrets Act but so many celebrities lived in this neighbourhood I couldn't resist a quick peek or two.

Perhaps that's why I've been charged with tax dodging half a century later.

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