An Exclusive Look Into The Seedy World Of British Taxes
I quite enjoy a nice drive through the country and a droll chortle at life’s funniest certainty.
Dear Mr A***
I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more than prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise.
I will address them, as ever, in order. Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last as a “begging letter”. It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a “tax demand”. This is how we at the Inland Revenue have always, for reasons of accuracy, traditionally referred to such documents.
Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the “endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat” has been noted. However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer I would cautiously suggest that their being from “pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and “pissant gas-mongerers” might indicate that your decision to “file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies” is at best a little ill-advised.
In common with my own organisation, it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a “lackwit bumpkin” or, come to that, a “sodding charity”. More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain, with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole.
Which brings me to my next point. Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay “go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the Public Services”, a moment’s rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to “stump up for the whole damned party” yourself. The estimates you provide for the Chancellor’s disbursement of the funds levied by taxation, whilst colourful, are, in fairness, a little off the mark. Less than you seem to imagine is spent on “junkets for Bunterish lickspittles” and “dancing whores” whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to, for example, “that box-ticking facade of a university system.”
A couple of technical points arising from direct queries:
1. The reason we don’t simply write “Muggins” on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system;
2. You can rest assured that “sucking the very marrows of those with nothing else to give” has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn’t render it irrelevant, the sheer medical logistics involved would make it financially unviable.
I trust this has helped. In the meantime, whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other, I ought to point out that even if you did choose to “give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India”, you would still owe us the money. Please forward it by Friday.
Yours Sincerely,
H***
Customer Relations
Submitted by: Alex
@crazyemails
I needed a dictionary to get through this letter.
“I needed a dictionary to get through this letter.”
All that tax, paid in vain.
Hardly. I’d be pretty impressed if the US saw one red cent of the collection of British taxes. Perhaps I should have clarified that I needed a “slang” dictionary to get through this letter. I guess I wasn’t clear enough for the Brits. My appologies.
I am dutch, as from the Netherlands, a tiny country in Europe. Pay tax, went to school, and managed to read that whole letter without any dictionary.
It might help that I do not automatically assume that the internet is an all-merikan affair, nor the rest of the world.
No, I don’t hate merikans.
Nor brits.
Only arrogant people.
Who took a shit in your clogs?!
@zappafrank:
I, another Dutch person, quite agree with your response to this post. And nearly fell off my chair laughing after reading that.
I’m an Aussie and I don’t get all this Brittish slang bs either. Perhaps it’s a European thing, considering the rest of you understand it. But I’m sure a lot of Brits wouldn’t understand a word I was saying if I started using Aussie slang. Leave the poor girl alone…
I did’nt, and I’m from bloody Finland!
What’s so difficult about English?
Even Americans manage it.
I hate british.
and we hate you.
Enter the bumpkins. “I hate you!!” “I hate you more!!!” “You suck!” “No, you suck!”
And to rebuttle your comment in the most original way possible “You Suck!”
There, I did it.
Am I not mistaken that this letter is actually sensible? It speaks as though it is quotig an earlier Email from the crazy person, and does so incredibly well.
Yours,
Her Mejesties Customs and Revenue
Nah, not Really.
Fabulous!
*applauds*
Oh please let this be genuine! I will never complain about my taxes if the Inland Revenue has such wits on staff
Excellent writing, makes me wish I could have seen the letter they are replying to as well though, it sounds like an even bigger gem.
Oh that’s terrific! That makes my heart happy. ^_^
Awesome letter! I’d love to have seen the original, but this is a fantastic reply!!
That was awesome
I do have to admire the vocabulary of both the complainant and the Inland Revenue clark. They both seem quite erudite. Being American, I did have to look up the cultural reference to “Muggins”, but that only took a few seconds, thank you to Firefox for the built-in Google search box. I agree with Sparky as to the wish for it to be genuine. I can only say that it would be splendid if the American Internal Revenue Service had such people on their staff.
Oh, I *like* this one, real or not.
Oh PLEASE let this be true. It would make me SO SO Happy!
I love the British.
and we love you xx
Good show, ole’ boy!
IRS win.
OR whatever it’s called over there.
Inland revenue.
Abso-bloody-lutely brilliant! Could you imagine the IRS trying to get away with a letter like that? The recipient would sue them for millions.
YES!
Win for my home country. I thank you for the good decency to put up an intelligent british response to a cock-mongering wanker. i wish i knew this guy to give him some chocolate or flowers or something.
I have to say I’d always assumed the writer was a woman! Still love the letter though, real or fake, male or female author.
Brilliant!
Gobsmacked!
The letter by itself is very funny, but my favorite part is as I read it, I noticed Tax Masters ads at the top and sides of the page. Priceless.
From the context of the letter, I believe that this is a missive TO a crazy person rather than FROM one.
Very nice. The British are so polite, even to crazy loonies.
Nothing infuriates vulgar people more than being shown up by a polite and proper (if slightly sarcastic) response. If this is genuine, I can only imagine the violent rage the recipient must have flown into upon reading it.
I love it but it sounds like a fake to me. Nobody who works for any taxation department has the time or wits, or inclination to write this.
That is the most awesome response to anything I have ever seen.
Yet another example of why I love the British.
What I love about the Brits is that even in writing, they sound so damn polite when insulting you! I wish I had that prowess.
It’s a useful talent to be sure. I’ve been told I’m very polite while being insulting and sarcastic on a number of occasions. It’s particularly useful when dealing with the witless who frequently don’t understand that they’re being insulted. That happened very often when I worked in retail.
Then should RGH and I assume you were working somewhere in pig-ignorant America? Selling to the pig-ignorant Americans? They probably thought you were ‘awesome’ (from the above comments, they don’t seem to have a much more imaginative vocab than that, bless).
Excuse me? Not everyone on this side of the Atlantic is “pig-ignorant”. Yes, we have our profoundly stupid people, but so does every other continent. We are not the exclusive perpetrators of swinelike-stupidity.
This letter is full of WIN.
wait- what happened to the friday fight?
This is why I spent all my time in college reading Tom Jones, Evelina, and Pamela. The English are old hands at dishing it out intelligently.
BRAVO and ENCORE
-backwoods USA
I’d love to see the letter that preceded this one. That must have been one hell of a rant.
“I ought to point out that even if you did choose to “give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India”, you would still owe us the money. Please forward it by Friday.”
Whilst I do enjoy laughing-out-loud as often as possible, this last line forced an uplifting chuckle out of me and made my day. ^^
This one has been doing the rounds for a while, I have it in a (British) book of funny e-mails from 2000. It is hilarious though, though probably made up…
That is absolutely hysterical. Wow.
This letter makes me so proud that half of me is British. I think it’s the left side, for it’s sense of humor has always seemed a bit dry and enjoys the odd digestive biscuit a bit more than the right. This guy WINS. Go England!
I don’t know why someone anonymised this letter when it was published in full in The Guardian on the 27th Sep 2003. For that reason, I’m going to stick my head out and say it’s genuine.
This is beautiful. I’d love to congratulate whoever wrote it!
I love it when ignorance is met with grace.
Thanks, IMMD.
Sadly, I don’t think this is real. I worked for the Inland Revenue a while and I don’t think anyone would dare send out letters like that. I had to send out letters all the time but they were almost always form-written.The fact that the letter requests money by the end of that week seems iffy. This letter is written with humour in mind, not any kind of tax-grubbing result. It’s still a cracking read, though.
Agreed. It looks to me like the sort of office jokes that used to be faxed and photocopied and now reach everyone on your email list as forwarded emails.
I’m 48 and my only kid is 27, and I’m a gramma and SOOO past my baby-makin’ days, but for H****’? I would re-open the baby factory. That was awesome!
The Brits are just awesome. I love how they can be so elegant while ripping somebody a new one.
Laughed so much I almost burst a blood vessel. Thank you.
Oh my god, thats absolute hilarity. At least they took it in SOME form of humour
@Cho
Don’t worry, we hate you too.
That tax officer must have had great fun writing that. Would have loved to read the letter he was sent.
“that box-ticking facade of a university system.”
I would like to cordially invite Mr. A*** to partake of our lectures, lab classes and tutorials. To write a 12,000 word dissertation on gene p53 mutations and suitable animal models to investigate said mutations. To learn how to diagnose meningitis, cancer and diphtheria. To research gene therapies. Because I’ve noticed a distinct LACK of boxes to tick in my coursework and would like him to point them out to me, since I’m OBVIOUSLY overlooking them somewhere.
What. A. F*nny. XD
As much as I enjoyed this letter, I doubt it is real. Why would the HMRC have a “Customer Relations” department? Taxpayers aren’t usually described as “customers”. (They do seem to use the phrase “Customer Relations” in connection with the services they provide tax advisers, but not taxpayers.)
This is great. I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. Thanks!
Ahh, takes me back to when a newspaper declared the local educational system incompetant. We sent the article back to them with 47 typos circled.
I’ve seen this in more than one English class in the US education system. It could still be based on a true letter, but that seems a bit unlikely. Don’t mean to ruin the fun, though — Hopefully boring tax people (especially in the IRS here in the States) can take a page out of this lesson.
Epic, epic win.
… This made my day XD
@Tango
Depressingly enough, the expression “taxpayer” was officially replaced with “customer” when HMRC took over some benefits and credits. Even more depressingly, I work there. We don’t have anyone in “customer relations” and if anyone sent out a letter like this, they would probably be fired. Wish we could, though.
Oh well.. still funny
What part of it’s a BRITISH LETTER do you folks who need a dictionary, NOT understand? Did you think just because they speak English they have exactly the same vocabulary and expressions? A little viewing of their shows on PBS would have cleared that up for you.
Maybe it’s because I live in Texas. We have sayings I don’t expect other folks to understand. Louisiana has sayings that are unique to their local culture.
I’m stunned that anyone would think that the British would communicate exactly as Americans. Please, have we all become Muggins in America? For crying out loud, lift your lazy ass fingers and use the google search and learn something outside of your myopic existence. The Brits are HILARIOUS!!
Love it, and I am reminded of why I am so proud of being British.
Just the other day i walked past a group of lads who told me to “get a hair cut, Minger” to which I turned aroud, gave them a look my Mum would be proud of and said, “Now their’s no need to be so rude, I didn’t do anything to offend you did i? S why behave in that manner?” at which, the lad who made the comment had the grace to look ashamed and said “sorry”. LMAO! how British!
I would just like to say that, as someone who lives in Canada and speaks English as her second language, I had no difficulty reading this letter.
Difficulty believing that its genuine…that’s another story.
Published in the Guardian, yes: and completely a work of fiction, just like the chap who stole 40000 coathangers (Google it).
Probably the most obvious clue is that even though the original letter is not shown, you do not need to have it: it’s quoted and paraphrased so heavily. Why do this? So that the reader can get the jokes. The person who’d written it wouldn’t need all that quoting and context.
I’ll put in my two pence worth and say it’s not a genuine letter. Britons use the word ‘beg’ rather than ‘panhandle’ and call the government bureaucracy the ‘civil’ not ‘public’ service. My guess is that the author is a witty north American. (Australians and New Zealanders don’t get miffed; you know you wouldn’t panhandle either.)
Actually, I think it probably is written by a British person, even if fake. When he says ‘public services’ I think it’s referring to the NHS, and other such, err… public services. Also, I would be immensely impressed if someone in North America caught the meaning behind ‘Bunterish lickspittles’. But hey, I could be wrong.
The Brits certainly know some of our slang, just as we know some of theirs through the magic of media.
I’m moving to Britain. Best response ever.
That guy got owned. Awesome.
this is the best letter ever…..you can tell that they actually read his letter of complaints and in typical (maybe even stereotypical) British humour responded…OMG this was AWESOME!!!
There’s only about 3 words of ’slang’ in this at all, anyway. Someone should have paid attention in the 3rd grade in America.
It’s fake. I’ve worked for the big bad tax people over here, and they haven’t been called the Inland Revenue for years; they merged with customs and it’s now HM Revenue & Customs. All letters and such will be letterheaded as HMRC and the organisation will be referred to as HMRC as well.
Plus, they just wouldn’t respond this way.
Shame!
A gem. Mind you, after I’d been working for just over a year after I left Uni, I calculated that I’d then paid more in taxes than all the grants I’d ever received (yes, this was a long time ago). I wrote to the Inland Revenue explaining that as I had now repaid my debt to society I no longer wanted to be a member of their club and could they please remove me from their subscription register.
I didn’t get a reply