As most people know by now, I have been in battle with HMRC for years over their cruel pursuit of scam and fraud victims who have lost their savings, their self-respect, their security and in some cases their lives because of dishonest advisers.

They recently agreed to a short moratorium on tax collection while we explored solutions – on their side, how to collect the tax and on mine how to change things so that they don’t. It’s been a rollercoaster. They agreed to suspend tax enforcement measures until 1 September - not the breathing space you might expect, because interest continues to accrue on the amounts they want to collect and they insisted on writing out to all victims to tell them they would be pursuing the tax in September (you’ve got to love the customer service approach - not), but simply keeping the bailiffs on a leash until then.

Then out of the blue the election starting gun was fired and our work with HMRC screeched to a halt – the silence was deafening. I breathed normally for a couple of days, only to learn that the timebomb is still ticking on the enforcement date (E-Day), even though I and my colleagues are helpless to negotiate.

I cannot for the life of me understand why HMRC seems to hate its customers so much. They’re only human after all. They know the extreme harms being done by their actions, but they simply don’t care. They are rule-bound when it suits them and deaf when it doesn’t. Their idea of a fair system is simply giving time to pay the amount they deem is owed to the exchequer. No sweetheart deals for scams victims. No account of circumstances, no recognition that third party fraud has changed the tax landscape and no willingness to listen to reason.

I consoled myself that a new government would take a more sensible and empathic view of victims, but most parties now seem to be fixated on a crackdown on tax avoidance. This sounds like a worthwhile and sensible thing to do, but when you know that scam victims are wrongly and persistently labelled by governments as tax avoiders who deserve to be punished, a common-sense policy becomes a dangerous tool.

There will be suicides because HMRC and government is not listening and not interested. On pension scams, the tax they are determined to collect amounts to around £20million. Compared to the avoidable harm being done to citizens and the amount of resources going into the tax collection process itself, this sum is a mere drop in the ocean. It cannot be in the public interest to continue to hold the line that HMRC holds. It cannot be right that HMRC uses rules to do what they like and resist any attempts to amend those rules.

They have repeatedly told me that they only follow the rules and that if parliamentarians change the rules, then so will HMRC. Sounds easy, but HMRC will of course advise parliamentarians against a such change in the rules.

In other news, the Fraud Compensation Fund has been paying out claims for losses to schemes due to fraud (yay!) and a couple of important cases are going through the process. The lovely team in Croydon has been working hard to do the right thing and seeing first-hand the dishonest behaviour by scammers. I love their “can do” attitude.

However, despite all this positive work in Croydon, what will happen next is completely absurd. Where it has been proven that scheme losses were down to fraud, the FCF (funded by a levy on industry) will pay out to the scheme to make up those losses. HMRC will then take 40% of that money in tax because the rules say they can. They will also take 55% in tax from the members (victims) of the scams. Incredibly, the only people who benefit from the scam are the fraudsters, who get away with it and the tax man who takes from the both the victims and from the scheme. I believe this is benefiting from the proceeds of crime and therefore both legal and illegal at the same time. Are you happy that your levy will be used this way? I’m certainly not.

I may be down but I’m certainly not out. I am preparing a “manifesto” for scam victims to send to their prospective MP hopefuls so they can all see what is going on and perhaps many will feel motivated to help the constituents they serve.

Margaret Snowdon – Chair, PSIG