Woman asks tax men for 33 pounds, gets 1.5 mn

LONDON - A British pensioner whose account was wrongly debited of 33 pounds by the tax office was stunned to get a cheque for 1.5 million pounds in reply to her complaint.

Elizabeth Jenkins, 86, had told HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) that they had wrongly taken 33 pounds from her account and they promised a refund. When nothing happened for six months, she called again to be told a cheque had been posted to her and cashed. Inquiries revealed the cheque had been sent to a wrong address.

A new cheque was sent to her but to her surprise it was for 1,511,533.80 pounds.

The retired civil servant from Bournemouth has not cashed it yet. She says she has repeatedly called the tax office for a cheque with the correct amount, but has not heard from them so far.

She told The Mirror: “I’m sure that if the roles were reversed and I had owed them money for over a year I’d probably be in jail now. They would hound me and hound me until I paid it back. So I’m going to hound them.”

An HMRC spokesman merely said: “We handle huge numbers of tax repayments and unfortunately things sometimes go wrong. When they do we apologise and sort things out as quickly as possible.”