Those of who follow this blog avidly - an elite and handsome group no doubt - will be pleased to hear that following my letter to Gordon Brown, suggesting it would not go amiss to receive the occasional thanks for sending him vast amounts of VAT, I have received a reply!

HM Revenue & Customs have written as follows:

Dear Mr Foster

You wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 24 January about payments of VAT made by your company. Your letter has been passed to Revenue & Customs and to this team which is responsible for VAT payment policy.

The tax system on the good compliance of businesses like yours and our aim in Revenue & Custms is to balance our duty to collect taxes on behalf of the Goverment with fairness to taxpayers who pay the correct tax at the correct time.

Our strategy is to focus on non-compliance and we are committed to making the tax system as simple as possible for compliant businesses. To this end our contact with complaint businesses is kept to the minimum possible (Editor: and here it comes!) but this does not reflect any lack of appreciation for their efforts in meeting their tax obligations.

Yours sincerely

Paul Olive


I love England!

Where else in the world would you receive such a prompt, polite and pointed reply to a letter to the most powerful man in the land!

I am tempted to pay a little bit more than necessary in our next VAT return to celebrate the joy of being a Brit!