when you didn’t cash the cheque they gave the money to charity, rather than just used it to swell the government coffers.

I excitedly opened a letter from them yesterday, in the past I’ve received a couple of hundred quid back. This year…£15 quid. I doubt I’ll ever get round to cashing the cheque, and I’m assuming lots of folks would receive even less and be in same boat.

What happens to all the unclaimed money?

Cash the cheque and give the funds to charity yourself. I’m sure someone would welcome £15 for the amount of time and effort it would take you.

I’m guessing any uncashed amounts eventually go back to the Treasury.

I could, and following your suggestion I probably will…but wouldn’t it be nice if it happened by default?

A rebate would be nice. What I get is a letter saying I owe them £2770. Turns out to be an error on their part but I have to write the letter to raise the issue etc and they tell me on the phone “this could take some time to rectify”. Brilliant.

but wouldn’t it be nice if it happened by default?

So you can’t be arsed but expect them to be? And what charity would you prefer they give it to?

Surely it makes so much more sense to do it yourself so you can be sure your preferred charity benefits.

Cheque? In this day and age?

On the charity side, if they give the £15 then that would be that. If you cash the cheque and then give it to charity AND tick the gift aid box they get another £3. So you are literally taking money from charity by not doing it yourself 😉

So you can’t be arsed but expect them to be? And what charity would you prefer they give it to?

Whether I as an individual can or can’t be arsed isn’t really the point. Its whether the hundred of thousands of folks who receive tiny sums by cheque can, collectively, be arsed.

Sure those that can be bothered can always cash the cheque and give it to a charity of their choice, for those that aren’t it would be nice for the cash to go to a worthy cause, rather than the treasury.

rather than the treasury

But the treasury already give huge sums in aid via the Government…

And for what it’s worth, I would make sure I cashed a cheque from them, no matter how small, on a matter of principle.

And which charity would the government give it to? There are so many, some more worthy than others, some better run than others, and some are blatantly corrupt (like that one that went bust the other month, can’t quite remember its name right now). It’s a potential minefield. Being many billions of pounds in the red i’d prefer that the money went towards the national debt so the whole country can start to benefit a lot sooner.

One idea is that it could be used to offset the costs of collecting evaded taxes, but ultimately all the money goes into one big pot, you can divvy it up how you like for the purposes of reporting, but it all nets out the same at the end of the day.

And for what it’s worth, I would make sure I cashed a cheque from them, no matter how small, on a matter of principle.

The one time I got anything back – on the basis that my employer had had me on the new starter/emergency tax code for over a year – I was hoping my Dad’s adage that “every pound you get back from HMRC is worth two” was true. Unfortunately not, but 1500 of them in one go was still quite nice.

A rebate would be nice. What I get is a letter saying I owe them £2770. Turns out to be an error on their part but I have to write the letter to raise the issue etc and they tell me on the phone “this could take some time to rectify”. Brilliant.

Good luck with that kennedy. You will now enter the kafka-esque vortex of the most dysfunctional and utterly incompetent organisation on the planet. If they say it may take some time, you could be talking years. Expect to lose the will to live as you spend yet more hours of your life on hold, waiting to speak to a barely literate hairless baboon, who will put you on hold again so you can speak to another one, with one additional brain cell.

My advice: don’t bother. And don’t email either. Put everything in writing, and send it recorded delivery, so that you have a record of them receiving it, for when they inevitably tell you they have no record of it.

They are complete imbeciles. Treat them as such

Can you tell I know this from bitter experience? 😈

been there and still playing on that swing.
I owe them, next year they owe me, year after I owe them, the following year they owe me….you get the drift. get smaller each year so i assume its going to converge to zero at somepoint in 2125

Don’t cash it. Then pretend that your £15 was part of the foreign aid budget.

If they say it may take some time, you could be talking years.

Then the day after you get it back, they’ll send you another letter saying you owe them £2,771…

I’d cash a cheque for £15.

If you’re bothered, donate it to charity with Gift Aid and thus add 20% or whatever the uplift is.

I’d cash a cheque for £15.

so would I if the bank was closer and open at times I wasn’t working. I won’t be taking 30 minutes out my lunch hour to do it however.

PAC website
You can watch HMRC here to show that customers are top of their agenda. Even you Binners. Their staffing and budget has been decreasing substantially for years so maybe more staff would help? Not everything can be resolved with greater efficiency.

I just post cheques to my bank, takes all of 30 seconds to write on an envelope…..

when you didn’t cash the cheque they gave the money to charity, rather than just used it to swell the government coffers.

In a way ‘the government’ is charity – a non profit-making organisation distributing funds and providing resources for the public benefit. A lot of what we do think of as ‘charity’ is delivered and funded from central and local government sources either through grants or through contracted services – all sorts of charitable organisations tender for and deliver government contracts and government departments buy services from the charitable sector too. Donations from the public are quite a small part of the income of the charity sector.