Inland Revenue Department
Office of the Commissioner of Inland Revenue
P.O. Box 666
London EC1
January 5, 2002
Beastly, Rotten & Scoundrel
Basement Level
Shitehill Towers
London W1
Attention: Edward Beastly
Re: Non-payment of PAYE
Dear Mr Beastly
It has come to the attention of this Office that you have recently employed a number of persons. No information has been received from your firm as to employee details, the first day of employment. No PAYE has been remitted for these employees.
This situation is unusual, in that the Office would not normally know about your new employees. However, some of them have been in contact with the Office and have provided us with your name and address.
Please remit the required details (enclosed is Form IR21B for that purpose) as soon as possible. To avoid late payment penalties, you should also remit the correct amount of PAYE by return post.
Please also explain to your employees that:
(a) Direct contact with the Office of the Commissioner to claim expenses is not usual. Your firm is expected to pay reasonable expenses. Any legitimate claims against tax paid should be made on the annual tax return form (IR5).
(b) Please also explain to your employees that certain types of claim are unlikely to be accepted by this Office. Examples provided by your employees include:
Breast implants. These may be claimed for by women whose primary employment is in the adult entertainment industry. Acting as milkmaids in a Christmas show (we are unable to determine whether this is a pagent, a pantomime or an unlicensed brothel) does not consitute such a legitimate basis for such claims.
Face lifts. You should understand that telling a female employee that she should “go and have a facelift done with a forklift truck” is probably bad advice. This particular employee appears to have acted on your advice and presented an invoice for £1,212,300 for the purchase of an Ellison five-ton forklift.
Replacement Bagpipe Bags. This may well be a legitimate expense in the context of the primary employment being as a piper in a highland pipe band. However, “accidentally bursting it while ‘aving a bit of rumpy-pumpy” does not constitute a legitimate reason for making a claim.
Guano Removal. A number of claims were put forward for dry-cleaning expenses. It appears that the location at which you require your employees to work is knee-deep in birdshit. That is your problem and constitutes a health hazard. Unfortunately, unless the persons lodging the claim are self-employed, they may not claim for dry-cleaning expenses.
I understand that there are also a number of health-related claims being made to various government agencies. The most interesting of these appears to be a sprained neck injury to one gentleman who apparently displeased another gentleman, whose response was to take the aforementioned first gentleman and to force him, head first, into a cow’s rectum.
I (a) trust that you are paying these people well, and (b) insist that you remit the appropriate amount of PAYE at our earliest convenience, not yours.
A. Buro Crat
(for the Commissioner of Inland Revenue)
