Anyone else having similar experience?

IR are writing to us on form TC606: "as appointee for the claimant(s) named below" in conection with claimants failure to return their annual declaration forms for 04-05.

We are not the appointee for the claimants although they have been our clients at some point in the (not neccessarily recent) past.

All TC606 are addressed from a Jim Harra at TCO 5 Preston. We have been unable to speak to this person direct.

Are other agencies getting similar letters?

Has the IT system developed a glitch which issues TC606 to agencies that are, or have been, an authorised representative for the claimant?

Yes!

In June I received 2 letters regarding a client, one of which was the annual declaration form. I phoned the helpline and told them I was not her appointee (emphasizing that I was still her representative!) and asked them to send the annual declaration form direct to her. Speaking to my client a few weeks later they had not done this.. Then received another letter this morning- TC606 from Jim Harra.

and now.....

the advisers helpline says they cannot correct this information over the phone we must write in (will they pay for our time correcting their error??) and anyway we filled in the claim form wrong putting ourselves as appointee (except that all other notices have been sent direct to the clients) but then software never goes wrong does it?

same problem here, got sent renewal pack, i phoned and pointed out I am not appointee but representative. got it sorted by finally getting through to one of the mythical breed of "Team leader".

i would like to speak to Mr Harra, too, as he seems unable to grasp the point i am making via written correspondence. However, he is incommunicado as is all of Working Tax Credit/Inland revenue "head office" (wherever that may be). I am affronted by the idea that a public servant who writes potentially damaging letters needing urgent response (as he has to my client) can remain unapproachable by telephone.Did you ever find a way through to talk to him? John Stothard 17/10/06

I don't believe in Jim Harra. I think he is just a legend and does not really exist.

Anyway, I have had the same trouble regarding being treated as someone's appointee when I am not, and despite 3 letters and a phone call from me, and numerous calls andd letters from the claimant, Jim Harra is still sending letters to me as their appointee. I would tear my hair out if I had any, especially as in another case I have now been told twice that signed authorisation for me to write to the TCO on my clients' behalf is not good enough because I am not the appointee. I must actually be in the room with the client(s) and hand her/him/them the phone or the TCO won't deal with me at all, and my letters are being ignored.

The DWP has always accepted a signed authorisation, so why is the TCO adopting this attitude? More importantly, has anyone any advice on how to challenge it? My clients live over 20 miles away. I can hardly nip round to their house to use the phone every time there is a problem (which is very frequently) with their Tax Credits. What if someone doesn't have a phone, or has had it cut off? What do we do then? And how, pray, do we prove that a phone call conversation ever took place?

I use form TC689 along with my usual "in house" signed authority and this seems to do the trick. See:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/forms/tc689.pdf

We just use the TC689 - we don't send one of our own too. We've never been treated as an appointee - yet!!!!

We only use the TC689 and it usually avoids being treated as appointee. We got treated as appointees a couple of times when TCs were very new, but not recently.

The best one was when we wrote on a client's behalf to point out that the advice worker at another centre who completed her claim form was not an appointee. The response was to make us appointees and send us Giros for £600 made payable to the Law Centre!

This is extremely worrying that this is still going on. I have raised it at the Tax Credits Consultation meeting back in May and they said that they should normally follow a DWP appointeeship decision or, if the client wasn't getting any DWP benefits, a TC228 is sent to the potential appointee which is sent to the DWP who do the checks on HMRC's behalf.

The only case I have come across is when an advice worker at another centre (might be the same one as you're referring to Keith!) had been filling in the appointeeship section at the back thinking it was the same as the IB50 bit that asks if somebody has filled the form in on behalf of the claimant. Ok, that was a bit daft but their security checks should have spotted it. I presumed it was just teething problems as it was very early on.

I will send a link to this thread to the person in charge of the TCCG to alert them to the problems still occurring. Ok its inconvenient to us but the security implications are massive as are exploitation possibilities.

They are still doing it and still refuse to correct their error. It still appears that if an organisation is listed as agent / representative that can get recorded as appointee.