Dear Overbearing Government Departments,

This week has been hellish. Why? Well Hubby got paid this month and had nearly a whooping £1000 taken in PAYE and another £200 in NI...Is he on a massive wage - over the tax bracket you might think? Well at a modest £22k pay per annum the answer is no, not at all. So what's going on? Well when he called them up to find out, they said that they had gone ahead and changed his tax code because he "had a company car and was claiming a company car allowance"...?? After much stratching of heads, Hubby managed to explain to the rather bewilded Government lacky on the other end of the phone that actually the use of the company car had ceased in Aug last year when he had closed his previous company and that he'd been getting a company car allowance from the new firm he was now employed by, but that he had had to go out and purchase his own car to run now that the company car had gone back last year. So rather than ask the simple question..."Mr B do you still have the use of a company car from Homefinder UK Ltd", the HMRC just simply *decided* that he did and that they would whollop him for tax until he questioned them about it!! To top it all off they have said to him that they won't repay the tax that they wrongly just pinched, until next month when his tax code will be adjusted back!! So for a month they have literally dipped into our bank account, taken our money for a month and put it in the government coffers. Ok - it's hardly going to solve the economic crisis is our months interest on the sum held in the Government's bank, but a) I doubt we are the only ones who've had a similar "theft" of our hard earned money by the state and b) it *IS* actually OUR money - not theirs to take at will and use to earn interest on.

But that's not the best of it. I get the children's Child Benefit payments paid to me as the Mother, monthly in a giro. I have always had it paid this way as I like to get the payment from our Post Office (meaning it gives Amy in the PO something to do and it gets me to the PO to find out all the village gossip!!) but it also means I have some cash to buy things for the children as and when they need them over the month without interferance or hand outs from my Husband. It's money that I don't WANT to be put into the joint bank account for fear it will just get swallowed up with general bills etc and won't get used for the children's benefit - which *is* afterall what it's there for. So imagine my suprise when phoning up to enquire as to the whereabouts of the cheque to be told "Oh we've paid it into your bank account" ....WHAT? "Wait...how?? How did you get my details? You'd previously asked me if I wanted it paying into my bank account and I'd specifically said no and had NOT given you my bank details...so how did you get them?" (as they did indeed have the correct details) "We got them from the Child Tax Credits office" came the answer!! So despite me saying under no circumstances were they to pay the money into the joint account I hold with my Husband...they ignored that request and simply got the details from another government agency and did as THEY pleased anyway!

Surely this can't be right? Surely if you say to them you want the payments in a certain way then they have to listen?? The best bit of this tale was that the chap I spoke to about it all said I now needed to write a letter to Newcastle Upon Tyne's Child Benefit office telling them to swop it back and that "in the meantime" he would suspend any further payments to me via bank!! So not only have they changed the way my payments are made, they now want to inconvenince me by MAKING me write to them now to ask them to kindly change the payments back to how I wanted them in the first place - oh and I won't be getting any further payments whilst they sort out the mess they created. Convenient hey?

So all in all the Government is taking money from us that doesn't belong to them and getting a month's interest on it and is now withholding other payments which again gains them interest whilstever they take however long it'll take to sort this mess they've handily created. So the only winners this month seem to be the Government who are now scrounging for the their budgetry shortfalls from the general public.

Now in the grand scheme of things our money isn't a lot - but imagine if they are doing this sort of thing as a matter of course for a lot of people...starts to add up to a lot of money the Government are either taking from people's accounts or withholding from others.

What do you think? Are they doing this sort of thing to keep monies in the Government Treasury coffers? Is it right? What can we do about it??