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The volume of wasted taxpayer money we see every month in the form of useless mailings is absurd and in terms of wasted man hours at our end, exhausting. Over the last two days we've received perhaps 16,000 envelopes all of which we dutifully opened, read and promptly dumped in the recycling bin (I'm just glad it was all company post rather than anything that contained personal data as then we would have had to file it).

This is all because HMRC cannot stop automatically mailing us. Each month we receive around 8000 letters about VAT, all of which serve no purpose. All our submissions to HMRC are electronic now (in fact we were invited by HMRC to be one of the first companies that submit VAT that way), whenever there is the option of electronic submission we're always among the first companies to start as it is simply so much easier and less prone to serious error.

We've told them numerous times not to send them so it's not like they are unaware, it's just that their systems can't keep track, there is no box they can tick to turn it off.

As a result we see this money wasted and it's galling; just one months VAT mailing alone we estimate to cost £2400 (10p for the letter and envelope 20p for the 1st class postage (that's assuming they get a discount) and 8000 letters), and that's just for us! For several years now we've been paying extra for recycling bins based on the volume of HMRC post we get each month.

Those of you concerned about the environment might also consider the carbon footprint of all this, wasted paper, the fuel used to deliver the mailing, and the energy required to print and stuff all the envelopes, it's a crazy waste.

All this costs money, yours and mine and looking at the larger picture, it's not small amounts, it's tens of thousands with just our company alone, all for the sake of a tick box and what I am sure is some relatively minor reprogramming. It could probably all be done for a fraction of the cost of sending us the mail in the first place.

That's it for now, I'll be back again tomorrow with another thrilling part of our series on determining self employment. I'm sure you can't wait.

If you want to get in touch on today's topic or any other you can below.

Hugo
20/11/2008