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February 5, 2012

Tag: hmrc

January 26, 2012

I can destroy you, Moira Stewart tells self-assessment taxpayers

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Well – at least that’s what ‘The Daily Mash‘ (a satirical online newspaper) is reporting. Their spoof article continues:

MOIRA Stewart, the all-seeing God of Tax, has warned of great suffering for those self-employed workers whose forms displease her.

Powerful divinity Stewart, whose earthly guises include a semi-likeable middle-aged woman, a grey fox and a fire-breathing lizard with nine heads and 43 tusks, has assured mortals that she will not be made a mockery of as the Great Deadline of January 31 approaches.

Stewart, also known as Brabarine or ‘The Taxacious One’, said: “The hour of self-assessment is nigh.

“But heed my words – a Tesco carrier bag full of crumpled receipts and sweet wrappers does not represent adequate record keeping.

“Nor can you simply make up a number, times it by four and call it your ‘mileage allowance’.

“I have many eyes and many ears. My minions include HMRC inspectors, birds and little insects that land on my shoulder and chirrup of your lies.”

Stewart’s main shrine, The Golden Temple of the HMRC Dawn, has been inundated with offerings from workers anxious to curry favour with the implacable god.

Scaffolder Tom Logan said: “After sending my tax return, I became paranoid that I may have somehow forgotten to include about six months’ worth of cash-in-hand work.

“So I’ve brought this fatted calf and plan to kill it in the reception area, hoping that it will encourage Moira Stewart to be merciful.”

Meanwhile thousands of concerned self-assessment taxpayers are trapped in the Celestial Maze, also known as the HMRC Helpline.

Masseuse Nikki Hollis said: “There are many menus, each one promising to lead you to an advisor.

“But they only lead to further menus, or a recorded message telling you to go to the website. And if you accidentally press ’3′, you die instantly.”

January 23, 2012

The Inland Revenue episode of QI

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A recent episode of the current series of BBC TVs QI focused on the Inland Revenue. Clearly no one had told the researchers or producers that HMRC took over from the Inland Revenue almost 7 years ago (April 2005).
Still, that quibble aside, some of the stories are worth repeating on this blog:
The world’s most exotic tax inspectors are in Pakistan. If you refuse to pay your tax you are shamed into paying it by receiving a visit from a team of tax inspectors who are all transgender. They would then sing and dance in your place of business until you paid up. In Andhra Pradesh, India, tax inspectors use drummers to get people to pay tax, by standing outside the place of business and banging on the drums loudly until they pay up. The comedians on the show considered how the ‘Inland Revenue’ might achieve a similar outcome here. The favoured conclusion was to send in the Morris Dancers.
Sandi Toksvig once spent three days with a tax man who investigated all of her accounts. In the end he did not find anything and the taxman said: “To be honest Miss Toksvig, I just wanted to meet you.”

Dara O’Briain recalled an actor who tried to claim his carpet against tax because of the wear and tear he caused when he walked up and down while he learnt his lines. He did not get away with it. Dara himself once tried to claim for a bed but failed, while Sandi attempted to claim for some paintings in her office, failing as well. She told the tax inspector that no-one could possibly work in an office which had no art in it. Sandi looked around the inspector’s office and saw that it had just one poster in it, which explained the Heimlich manoeuvre.

December 22, 2011

Two HMRC related analogies that made me smile

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  1. If HMRC ran a café it would drag passers-by in from the street, force them to cook their own lunch, then fine them for overcooking the eggs. Two weeks later, it would dispatch a leaflet explaining that cooking eggs is easy! But doubling the fine.
  2. If you’re a wily corporation, you can play this malign incompetence to your advantage. If you are well-meaning but don’t have a degree in fiscal management, never mind funds for an accountant, then you must make endless angst-ridden calls to Patricia in the HMRC office in Pyongyang. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried phoning Patricia, but when she does pick up, she’s rarely pleased to hear from you. Having read the new report from the Public Accounts Committee about HMRC’s “systemic failures”, however, I’m going to ask Patricia out to lunch, order the lobster, then whisper over the petits fours: how about we call it quits? Or perhaps she might view me more favourably if instead of owing a three-figure sum, I owed eight figures.

The above both formed part of Richard Godwin’s Comment piece in The London Evening Standard on 21 December 2011.

October 28, 2011

What could the letters HMRC stand for?

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In the UK we recognise ‘HMRC’ as standing for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs – the body created by the merger of Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise in 2005.

What else might the letters represent?  Officially the answers are:

  • Health Management Research Center (University of Michigan) 
  • Human Mobility Research Centre (Queen’s University and Kingston General Hospital partnership; Ontario, Canada) 
  • Helicopter Multi-Role Computer 
  • Hierarchical Maximal Ratio Combining 
  • His Majesty’s Royal Communications (Jordan)

But let’s be more inventive:

  • Help Me Recover Cash
  • How Might Rhianna Cover-up?
  • Hold My Rubber Chicken

I fear I could go on for a while but instead let me invite others to suggest their own. Give it a go. Could be fun.

September 11, 2011

Does HMRC have it’s own Underground station?

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Took this photo a while back – just can’t remember where though….

August 8, 2011

Complaints, complaints, complaints

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We recently complained to HMRC about a repayment they were taking months to process.

We received a reply from one of their Complaints people saying that due to the volume of complaints they were dealing with, they would not be able to deal with our complaint for at least 35 days.

Needless to say, we complained about this…

True story relayed by an accountant on AccountingWeb. Can anyone beat that?

July 27, 2011

Who gets the Minimum Wage?

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Andy Atkins is an elderly accountant operating from offices above a shop in a small town. One day he received a letter from HMRC, stating that they suspected he was not paying his employees the National Minimum Wage and they would send an inspector to interview them. On the appointed day, the inspector turned up.

“Tell me about your staff,” he asked Andy.

“Well,” said Andy, “there’s my accounting trainee, I pay him £240 a week, and cover the costs of his training. Then there’s my PA. She gets £190 a week, along with free board and lodging in the flat above the office. There’s also the half-wit. He works a 16 hour day, does 90% of the work, earns about £25 a week, along with a bottle of whisky, and as a special treat occasionally gets to sleep with my wife.”

“That’s disgraceful” said the inspector, “I need to interview the half-wit.”

“That’ll be me then,” said Andy.

July 1, 2011

HMRC could pilot RTI on its own payroll

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Had a wicked thought last night. Think it belongs on this blog as it made me smile!

HMRC have said that they intend to run a pilot exercise to collate Real Time Information from volunteer employers in April 2012. Mandatory use of RTI for large employers will start from April 2013.

How about HMRC itself volunteers for the pilot re its own payroll? And taking that a stage further, how about if MPs were also included in this experiment?!

May 27, 2011

Sean Locke at the Taxation awards

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Sean Locke was the comic turn before the awards were announced last night. Before moving into his more mainstream material he shared some topical tax related thoughts including:

This is the 11th year of the awards – if you don’t count the 3 years we didn’t declare.
Good to see HMRC have a table here tonight. It’s easy to see which one it is as all the waiters are wearing balaclavas.
I told some friends I’d got this gig and they reckoned tax advisers would all be boring. But you’re not. I’ve met a few tonight. One even showed me his favourite receipts.

February 18, 2011

The last 10 pence

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A father walks into a restaurant with his young son..
He gives the young boy three 10p coins to play with to keep him occupied.

Suddenly, the boy starts choking and going blue in the face….
The father realises the boy has swallowed the coins and starts slapping him on the back..

The boy coughs up 2 of the 10p’s but is still choking.
Looking at his son, the father is panicking, shouting for help.

A well dressed, attractive, and serious looking woman, in a blue business suit is sitting at a coffee bar reading a newspaper and sipping a cup of coffee. At the sound of the commotion, she looks up, puts her coffee cup down, neatly folds the newspaper, places it on the counter, gets up from her seat and makes her way, unhurried, across the restaurant.

Reaching the boy, the woman carefully pulls down his pants; takes hold of the boy’s testicles and starts to squeeze and twist, gently at first and then ever so firmly… tighter and tighter !!!
After a few seconds the boy convulses violently and coughs up the last of the 10ps, which the woman deftly catches in her free hand.

Releasing the boy’s testicles, the woman hands the coin to the father and walks back to her seat at the coffee bar without saying a word.

As soon as he is sure that his son has suffered no ill effects, the father rushes over to the woman and starts thanking her saying, “I’ve never seen anybody do anything like that before, it was fantastic. Are you a doctor? “

‘No,’ the woman replied.
I’m a tax inspector at HMRC…’
My thanks to Alan Phillips of Phillips Associates for passing this on.

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