My apologies for the long, and slightly off-topic post below, but it surely must highlight some of the deficiencies currently within the Ministry of Defence.
The arrogance displayed in the subject below is indicative of the current culture, and can only strengthen the case against the Air Marshals, and the incumbent Secretary of State, in their refusal to acknowledge their own mistakes in the Chinook Affair.
In the case below the MoD have so far ignored the wishes, and promises of the Prime Minister, and relevant elected representatives of Parliament.
If this is correct, then surely the powers exhibited by the faceless Mandarins within MoD need curtailing severely, and swiftly, or is “Yes, Minister” still alive and thriving in Whitehall?
telegraph.co.uk
MoD 'fobs off' claims for tax refund on pensions
By Michael Smith Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 15/08/2002)
The MoD is telling relatives of disabled servicemen and women who were charged tax they should never have paid that they are not entitled to a refund.
The advice apparently ignores promises by ministers that it would all be paid back.
The MoD was bombarded with letters from disabled servicemen and women, or their relatives, asking if they qualified for a refund after The Telegraph revealed that their pensions should have been paid free of tax.
Lewis Moonie, veterans' minister, admitted that thousands of former servicemen or their widows and families were owed millions of pounds in tax that should never have been paid. Tony Blair apologised for the error, promising that all those affected would be repaid.
The vast majority of claimants do not have any of the relevant paperwork and have been forced to accept the MoD's assertions that they did not qualify for a refund or that they or their relative never paid tax in the first place.
However, one Telegraph reader who was told that his father did not pay any tax on his pension still has his father's papers, which clearly show that he did.
Michael Guthrie, of Ledbury, Herefordshire, was one of those who wrote to the Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency in Glasgow after Mr Blair's promise that the tax would be repaid.
His father, Geoff, joined the Royal Corps of Signals in the 1920s, serving in India, including a spell on the North-West Frontier, and Burma, where he was part of General William Slim's "forgotten" 14th Army.
After the war, by which time he was in his early 40s, Captain Geoff Guthrie emigrated to Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, before moving to South Africa, where he died in 1982.
Mr Guthrie told the officials that the reason he was asking about a possible refund was that he had found a certificate of tax paid on the pension among his father's papers.
But even so he received a letter back from the Armed Forces Personnel Administration Agency telling him that no refund was due as his father had never paid any tax on his pension.
The agency, which in its initial letter to Mr Guthrie sought to blame the media for the "misleading" publicity over the affair, insisted that Mr Guthrie's father could not have paid any tax on his pension.
"The pension that he received was a War Disability Pension, paid by the War Pensions Agency and these pensions were always paid non-taxable," the agency wrote.
Major John Perry, the retired officer who uncovered the scandal, said many of those who had written in appeared to have been "fobbed off" with the agency's insistence that pensions paid by the War Pensions Agency were not taxed.
"Mr Guthrie is very lucky in that he had the relevant paperwork to show this is not true. Most of those affected do not have any paperwork and have to take the MoD's word for it," said Major Perry.
"The MoD has been hiding behind confusing jargon which means nothing to most people. The issue is very simple. The law clearly states that anyone discharged because of a disability 'attributable to or aggravated by' their service should not pay tax on their pensions."
The MoD said last night that it was still looking into Mr Guthrie's claims.
An investigation into the whole affair was expected to report by the beginning of November.