News Digest

I’ll cut back on food to pay it: Pensioner Doug hit with ‘incorrect’ $7bn tax bill

A pensioner who received an unpaid bill of more than £4.7bn ($7bn) says the tax man must have mistaken him for a footballer. Doug Yeomans, 78, said the HMRC letter required a direct debit of almost $1.43bn a month for the next five months, to pay off the debt. The father-of-two, from Derbyshire, England, said: “I opened the letter and saw the amount and thought to myself, ‘I’d better start cutting down on the food bill then’.”

They must think I’m a footballer or something, but I don’t even think that Russian bloke who owns Chelsea could afford that amount.

Doug Yeomans

The former builder said that he found the demand waiting for him in a letter at the weekend. He said: “I think I can probably just about afford £255 ($400), but I think the rest might be pushing it a bit.” A spokesperson for HMRC said: “We are very sorry about our error. We don’t talk about individual cases but when we make mistakes we aim to put them right fast and apologise.”

When I phoned the customs people up to tell them about the tax demand the girl on the other end of the phone said to me ‘Yes, I think in this case there might have been an error.’

Doug Yeomans