I saw some chat recently on the Any Answers section of AccountingWeb about the way different sections of HM Revenue and Customs responded to the Agent’s Authorisation form. One agent was upset because staff had refused to talk to them on the phone about their clients. The reason was that they didn’t have a 64-8 paper authorisation. They had an online authorisation in place, but HMRC said it only authorised them to file online . “Is it Ok that HMRC staff are told to lie?” one of them demanded. You can see it here  https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/any-answers/is-it-ok-that-hmrc-staff-are-told-to-lie I can get how frustrating it is. I can get how perverse it seems. But HMRC will not have told staff to lie. As I said here , don’t think of HMRC as one unit – it’s more like a bunch of villages. And at the moment, the villagers keep moving from house to house as the work moves around. And when we were talking about emailher e, I made the point that each village has its own rules an...