HMRC gives trans people access to VIP hotline

[HannahinHampshire]

‘HMRC gives trans people to VIP hotline’. Why do the records of transgender people require greater protection? I spent an hour waiting for HMRC to answer my call the other day and then I was cut off before I could speak to an advisor.

www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/cfbb2461a6f96ebf

Yep.

It sounds as though this has always been the case, and it's just the logical result of changing somebody's tax records.

Agree, but it sounds as thought the system was set up when GRCs were introduced.

I'm pretty sure it's been in place for quite a lot longer than that.

The different contact number, yes. But trans people would only have had access after 2004.

I wonder if this is the start of the media investigating how much privacy a GRC gives?

So, hang on, why the fuss at all? If somebody's sex makes no difference to how they will be treated, why bother to record it in the first place, or make a hoo-hah if they want to claim to be a sex other than the one they originally were?

(I have been saying this about all sorts of things, mostly "nobody except a medic needs to know my sex on a form", since the early nineteen-sixties.)

For all you know, you met four trans people yesterday, you just weren't aware of two of them.

Highly unlikely...but I guess there's always a first time. 🙄

Did the article state whether people from other protected groups get this special treatment from HMRC?

Apparently, as one poster explained to me, ad nauseum, (admittedly because I guess I wasn't getting it) the other characteristics don't apply because HMRC doesn't record them, or something.. Has to do solely with the change in "legal sex" that a GRC confers. Or something. A few posters have disputed this argument, but I lost the will after a while.

I think that back when the GRA was implemented it did make a difference because you stop paying employer's NI when you reach pensionable age.

I can't think of a reason why it is relevant now, but your sex is part of your NI records, so part of the process of granting a GRC is changing the data HMRC hold, and because this is private (see Goodwin judgement) people with a GRC have access to this hotline.

The "one in two hundred" number is against it, at a guess.

Unless everyone who isn't absolutely certain they are of the sex they were observed to be at birth, and chooses always to dress and appear and behave as that sex stereotypically does according to present society, is counted as trans, I suppose. But that would mean that probably about fifty per cent of the population comes under the trans umbrella, if you allow that women wearing trousers is, or should be, gender-atypical. (I remember not being allowed into a coffee bar because I was wearing trousers, in the late 1960s. In the same year, a judge refused to hear a divorce case because the woman involved in it came into his court wearing a trouser-suit. And women wearing trousers also had to wear ties if they wanted to have a meal at I think it was the Ritz, may have been Claridges – the porter there kept some dickies behind his desk for them to borrow if they needed to.)

Surely it would be simpler and less expensive just to remove or ignore the sex-markers on all the records, rather than faff about changing them for a select few of the population? It would probably be a relief for the trans people not to be treated as different or special, too.

That does seem more sensible, but many older people will still have a tax history that relates to their sex.

When it was set up they probably thought they were doing the equivalent of witness protection for Hayley Cropper.

For anyone who is 72 years & 6 months or younger it's irrelevant whether they are male or female as their state pension age is the same for men & women.

It's not just sex markers, but also legal changes of name.

If, say, a TW was employed and going by the name of Danielle Smith but HMRC send a letter with their NINO / UTR etc on to their employer under the name 'Andrew Smith', then HMRC have breached confidentiality and possibly outed them to their employer; although it's probable the employer already knows, it can't be assumed and it's not HMRC's information to disclose.

I think it has more to do with the change of name alongside the change in sex (legal not actual). It's obviously not dangerous for people who do this like it is for e.g. DV victims but it would be easy to link them up with their previous name if they were in the open records bit and their neighbour chanced upon their record.
As a PP said the best way to contact the private records bit is to send an internal email and that's what staff are supposed to do (notify the private records unit) if they find one by accident BUT as happened with DH, they can find one and not realise and treat it as not private. For a DV victim this could be disastrous, for others e.g. celebrities just a pain. While people with a change of name and legal sex aren't celebrities I guess that's the reasoning - privacy mainly.

I’m being massively over taxed since my manly penis having husband upped and died. I’d really like to talk to someone at HMRC but having just spent almost 6 weeks in hospital I really haven’t got the strength of character to phone and hold on the HMRC none spesh folk number.

How does a trans person’s tax change with a GRC. Please tell me it’s for the worse not the better. Cos that’s the kind of nasty bitch I am these days.

In other news, I was bloody delighted to receive almost £2k extra on my pension because I was married. To a manly man. Would it have been different if he’d had a GRC?

I suppose the same could happen if you changed your name by deed poll, but I don't think there is any assumption of an entitlement to privacy when somebody changes their name by deed poll.

I think it all comes down to the fact that one of the main reasons the GRA was passed was to protect the right to privacy and tax records were a central part of the case that prompted the act.

drspouse
it would be easy to link them up with their previous name if they were in the open records bit and their neighbour chanced upon their record.

It occurs to me that one of the reasons someone who changed name and official sex might wish not to have their previous name available to for example their neighbours or workmates might be that under their previous name and when they were openly the other sex they were put onto the sex offender register for a sexual crime against a woman or women.

Just sayin'.....

Where does Sarah's Law stand on this, I wonder. And does the the National Sex Offender Register give both the name at the time of the crime and the current name of the offender?

What an absolute fucking shit show has been allowed to develop over the last ten years.

Could humans be any more stupid.

BE KIND!!!

yowser

this little slice of stupidity is really saying the quiet part out loud.

In transactivism, the reason women suffer from misogyny and sexual harassment is because they don't identify as men. The discrimination they suffer is all their own fault. gotcha

What a ridiculously stupid interpretation of what I just said. Arguing you further would be like playing chess with a pigeon.

trans people with a GRC have legally changed their sex in all other aspects

They really haven’t. Even the GRA stipulates they haven’t changed sex in all other aspects. There are some pretty fundamental exceptions.

In fact, except for special privileges in pensions, I’m struggling to think where so called ‘legal sex’ is relevant.

You repeating something that doesn’t make sense a million times doesn’t magically make it sensible.

In saying one is ‘trans’ or using the special trans helpline, holding a GRC, having records that show you made contributions as a man but then wanted early retirement at the female age, or having an obviously male voice on the phone but calling yourself ‘Boudicca’ (a trans name I came across recently) outs the service user as ‘trans’. There is no secret.

I think HMRC are being extremely disrespectful to its staff and their levels of professionalism to assume that the majority cannot deal with trans queries.

Yes. They even made a special change to the law to allow this for the men who could benefit from swapping from the male age to the female age.