A Briton who moved to the other side of the world was hounded by the HMRC for seven years to fill out unnecessary tax returns.
Michael Johnson, aged 77, was pursued by the taxman despite leaving the UK to live in New Zealand in 2007 after a career in the Navy and the tech sector.
They bombarded him with warnings, demands and penalty notices in what the HMRC admitted were the result of its own errors.
After leaving the UK, Mr Johnson heard nothing from HMRC for 10 years until 2017 when he got a letter and a notice of a £100 fine out of the blue.
The penalty was for not sending in a tax return for both 2015/16 and 2016/17.
In fact, Mr Johnson was not eligible to pay any tax in the UK and he attempted to prove this by sending HMRC a copy of his New Zealand passport.
The taxman wrote back to apologise, confirmed he did not need to pay any tax, cancelled the £100 fine and paid £25 in compensation to say sorry for the mistake and for Johnson’s time trying to fix the issue.
HMRC said the mistake was due to wrongly recording that Mr Johnson was self-employed and said it had resolved the problem.
However, a year later he received another HMRC letter demanding he file a tax return, as well as another £100 fine.
Once again, Mr Johnson wrote back to HMRC pointing out he was now a New Zealand citizen and owed no tax.
Again, HMRC apologised, cancelled the fine and this time it upped the compensation to £35.
Mr Johnson told This is Money: “I am now 77 and this stuff really distresses me. The letters, the wasted time, the copies and the threats from HMRC. Why am I being persecuted?”
After another year went by, HMRC wrote to Mr Johnson again. This time there was no fine, but rather a notification that it had changed his tax code.
Mr Johnson objected, and the taxman apologised again, saying the error was due to his private pension provider changing his details with HMRC.
He then received a third apology and another £25 in compensation, but this was still not the end of the matter.
For in 2021, Mr Johnson received yet another £100 fine from HMRC for allegedly not filing a tax return. And yet another £100 penalty notice arrived on his mat in 2024. Again, both were cancelled with compensation being offered.
An HMRC spokesperson said: “We have apologised to Mr Johnson and corrected his record to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
However, Johnson is not confident the issue has finally been resolved.
He said: “On a personal level, I feel little confidence that this will not reoccur. I have no alternative but to believe what they say.
“I believe that the people at HMRC have intentions to sort it because errors waste their time, money and effort but the computer system took actions without human intervention and is then blamed without any obvious control.”
