If, like me, you’re convinced you’ll never be truly happy until you’ve shinned up the greasy pole it is easy to forget that not every high-status indicator is desirable. For instance, if I had £100 million my wife’s constant threats to divorce me might actually carry some weight. Then there’s the fate that befell David Ross, the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse, over Christmas. I’ve lost count of the number of Lithuanian girls who’ve stormed out of my house at 4 a.m., but since I’m not a ‘Tory tycoon’ the tabloids couldn’t care less.
However, all of these disadvantages pale into insignificance next to a letter I saw pinned to a friend’s fridge on New Year’s Day. ‘Dear XXXX,’ it began. ‘I would like to welcome you to the HM Revenue and Customs High Net Worth Unit and let you know about new arrangements for dealing with your tax affairs.’
At first glance, the letter appeared to be quite innocent, as if these ‘new arrangements’ had been put in place entirely for my friend’s benefit. It continued: ‘The High Net Worth Unit has been set up to focus on the needs of the country’s wealthiest people to make it easier for them to get their tax affairs right.’ Sounds reasonable, right? But wait until you hear just how the HMRC intends to ‘focus’ on my friend’s ‘needs’.
According to the letter, the Revenue has empowered one man — a ‘single point of contact’ — to help my friend with his returns. This man’s ‘role’ includes ‘developing a sound understanding’ of my friend’s ‘financial interests’ and ‘leading a team of experienced tax professionals’ to ‘assist’ him in dealing with my friend’s ‘affairs’.
In other words, the HMRC has appointed some Javert-like figure to lead an army of beady-eyed accountants to go over my friend’s books with a view to extracting the maximum amount of tax. The icing on the cake is that the official title for this Witchfinder General is ‘Customer Relationship Manager’. Presumably, that’s what passes for a joke in HMRC.
The letter was dated 21 December, but just in case my friend didn’t think this was a sufficiently generous Christmas present from the Revenue, he received a follow-up letter a few days later informing him that his 2008/09 return was the subject of an ‘inquiry’. For those who’ve never experienced this pleasure, ‘inquiry’ is the polite term for investigation. Needless to say, the signatory of this letter was not my friend’s newly appointed ‘Customer Relationship Manager’. So much for the ‘single point of contact’. No doubt when my friend has satisfied one set of officials — having shelled out £25,000 in accountancy fees in the process — he’ll receive another letter informing him that he’s now being investigated by the High Net Worth Unit.
Some people reading this will be thinking, ‘Good on ’em.’ After all, it’s difficult to feel sympathy for a member of this exclusive club. But hold on. My friend isn’t one of ‘the country’s wealthiest people’. He’s never appeared on any rich list, doesn’t own a helicopter, isn’t on the board of a football club. He’s well-off, but there are tens of thousands of people better off than him. So why has he been made a member of the High Net Worth Unit? The only explanation he can think of is that he was recently described as a ‘millionaire’ in the Daily Mail.
Now I’ve nothing against the Mail — I write for it regularly — but their definition of a millionaire is anyone who owns a house worth over a million pounds even if he or she has an 85 per cent mortgage. By that measure, I’m a millionaire. Indeed, 250,000 British homeowners are millionaires. Is the Revenue going to assign a ‘Customer Relations Manager’ to each one of us? I hope not, because the cost of doing so would surely outweigh the additional tax they’re able to squeeze out of us.
If the selection criteria of the High Net Worth Unit are as arbitrary as my friend’s experience suggests, I doubt whether it’s a cost-effective use of the Revenue’s resources. A better name for it would be the Chippy Unit — a crack team of investigators, set up at the behest of Gordon Brown, that can be sicked on anyone described as rich by the Daily Mail. Poor David Ross. I bet he has the High Net Worth Unit crawling up his bottom at this very moment.
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