Deserves-Strangling tax letter

[punychicken]

BBC News

Shock over 'strangling' tax letter

The letter came from the Inland Revenue
A woman who contacted the Inland Revenue for help was stunned when officials wrote back calling her 'Mrs Deserves-Strangling'.

Michelle Stradling, of Yate, South Gloucestershire, called an automated phone line to ask for advice about children's tax credits.

After listening to the recorded message, she left her name and address and requested some information.

But the 29-year-old mother was shocked when the pack arrived on her doorstep days later - addressed to "Mrs Michelle Deserves-Strangling".

Mrs Stradling said: "I did a double take. I thought someone must have have misspelt my name.

"It is terrible. If someone from a violent relationship got this, it would set them back.

"The Inland Revenue has apologised, and asked me to send it back.

"They say they will launch an investigation, and the person responsible would be reprimanded."

A spokesman for the Inland Revenue said the culprit would be subject to disciplinary proceedings.

Earlier this year Pravin Patel from Gloucester was stunned to receive a letter from reward card company Nectar in which his name had been replaced with a racist insult.

 

[taras]

I liked the one where the guy at the AA changed Tony Blair's account to Saddam Hussein...

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Ah, some things never change! The Revenue must still be relying
on teams of poorly-paid badly-motivated casual staff, as they were
some twenty years ago, when I did a short spell. Then, as now,
tax-payers were treated to strange names, especially exotic middle
ones. Inspired by the bench of plants in "Britain's sickest building"
we took to giving out floral names such as Marigold, Cactus and Bindweed.

These got past the mail-room thought-police but I think Hedgehog,
Marmalade and Coughsweet were pulled.

Or variations could creep into the name of the large catering company
which provided the bulk of our correspondence and workers would
telephone in to deny indignantly that they had ever worked for a
firm called "Nasty Pasty" or "Devil's Pantry".

Another amusement was to enclose confidential notes from Banks and
Building Societies which contained warnings, "Under no circumstances
should the source of this information be disclosed to your client".

Mainly the work was on the lowest rate tax-payers' files but occasionally
a good fat file of some strongly-disputed case would find its way into the
in-tray. The Revenue were and probably still are one of the few organizations
which care if a client has complained to their MP, so the opportunities for
accidental disclosure were multiplied. I think one tax-payer may have been
startled to find that his MP had told the Revenue that he was a liar and
a crook - they should extend their investigations to his land deals!

These most embarrassing events were the easiest to explain away as
accidents due to insufficient training - after all, no one expected casual
assistants to spend the day reading files. Even the mail-room people were
usually polite when they brought back a dozen envelopes to suggest we
double-check the names. "I think you may find the names are not Paraquat
and Swarfega. Some writing can be very difficult to understand. You'll get
the hang of it when you've been here longer."