Thread by @keithmgordon

1/10 I had a case where my client was a widow in her late 70s, suffering from Parkinson’s.

2/10 HMRC repeatedly ignored requests for a lighter touch (despite their paperwork containing standard wording about alerting HMRC to any special needs).

3/10 In a Tribunal hearing, the HMRC officer explained that no special measures were implemented because the client’s advisers had not suggested anything specific.

Of course, no-one had pointed out the need to do so before that stage.

4/10 As a result, HMRC carried on regardless, asking endless personal questions in an aggressive tone and which contained some very misleading comments about the client’s advisers which put the advisers in a bad light in the client's eyes.

5/10 Those comments then led to a complaint being made by the advisers about the officer’s conduct.

6/10 That was also a case where the original officer’s Facebook account had been uncovered. That showed the officer’s two favourite quotes as “F*** the police” and a second sexually-explicit quote which I won’t even try to paraphrase.

7/10 The client’s advisers then complained about the suitability of such an officer being let loose on a vulnerable senior citizen (let alone being a civil servant).

In our Tribunal hearing, the officer’s manager confirmed that the officer had been taken off the case.

8/10 However, the manager explained that it was not because the officer was thought to be unsuitable for the case. The officer was apparently withdrawn “for staff welfare reasons”.

9/10 The manager thought that the officer required protection from the client’s solicitor, but the notion that the elderly and vulnerable client might have deserved protection from the HMRC officer did not seem to have crossed the manager's mind.

10/10 I am told that HMRC have been asked repeatedly, up to the highest level, to comment upon this matter, but have refused to do so.

It is cases like this that lend support to the notion that @hmrcgovuk are out of control.