My twopence worth
I recently fell foul of BAs approach to the refunds issue. They admitted that they owed me the tax but that they had a £30 refund admin charge which was more than the £27.80 tax. My view was that if they had charged me tax then they must have paid it to the government as only governments have tax raising powers. If they did pay it to the government, I expected the government to refund me (without an admin charge). If they hadn't paid it to the government, were they keeping tax money for themselves? I contacted the Environmental Tax Team at HMRC who gave me certain "pointers". When I relayed that back to BA, all of a sudden, I got my refund without any "admin" charges. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. Here is their response.
Dear Mr
Thank you for your return email about the refund of unused taxes.
I have followed this up further for you and I am pleased to inform you that the taxes of £27.80 will be refunded to you. I have passed your ticket to our refunds department for their further action. The refund will be credited to the Switch Card used to pay for the original booking.
Thank you for contacting us again about this, and I hope that you find this solution satisfactory.