Banking privacy

nightingale75

Can HMRC or the benefits agency access your bank account details or statements? If they already had the details of one account and you wanted to set up another, if you wanted to keep this private, would you be better off opening the account with a different bank or wouldn't it make any difference?

innovate

nightingale75 wrote: »

Can HMRC or the benefits agency access your bank account details or statements? If they already had the details of one account and you wanted to set up another, if you wanted to keep this private, would you be better off opening the account with a different bank or wouldn't it make any difference?

What are you trying to hide from whom? It would be quite foolish to think you can outwit the taxman or benefits agencies. If you did try, they'd catch up with you eventually.

Gromitt

nightingale75 wrote: »

if you wanted to keep this private, would you be better off opening the account with a different bank or wouldn't it make any difference?

If you want something private, keep everything in cash somewhere safe, and have no paper trail whatsoever. Very difficult today.

Private from who? HMRC? Not a chance. An investigation will uncover everything necessary.

Benefits agency? More difficult, but if you start lying to them they can find out eventually and then sue you for benefit fraud.

People have been investigated before when they noticed they were paying more in energy bills than they were getting in benefits, had no declared job and apparently no savings.

JuicyJesus

HMRC and the DWP have powers to obtain information from banks as part of investigations.

I'm thinking: benefit fraud.

Hazzanet

When I worked for NatWest in my youth, I remember getting sent down to one of the vaults in a city centre branch to sift through the 'waste' (old paid cheques that were stored for 6 years or so) to obtain the original cheques for the taxman that was investigating a company.

From that you can glean that (a) it was a long time ago, just before cheque imaging came in to play, (b) the cheques were issued before centralised voucher processing came in and (c) the taxman can look at your old cheques.

badger09

nightingale75 wrote: »

Can HMRC or the benefits agency access your bank account details or statements? If they already had the details of one account and you wanted to set up another, if you wanted to keep this private, would you be better off opening the account with a different bank or wouldn't it make any difference?

HMRC have various Information Powers. However, in the first instance, you would be asked to provide any information required in an enquiry into your tax affairs.

For anyone with several hours to kill
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/chmanual/CH20150.htm

Hominu

Put it this way - if what you put on appropriate forms doesn't match with reality, expect to be done for fraud unless you have a good reason.

System

I depends if it just genuine privacy or something else.

They can't just go into accounts when they want; they need your permission or a legally valid reason to do so e.g. suspected fraud.

nightingale75 wrote: »

Can HMRC or the benefits agency access your bank account details or statements? If they already had the details of one account and you wanted to set up another, if you wanted to keep this private, would you be better off opening the account with a different bank or wouldn't it make any difference?

innovate

Hominu wrote: »

Put it this way - if what you put on appropriate forms doesn't match with reality, expect to be done for fraud unless you have a good reason.

Agreed.

The usual applies - - if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

pqrdef

When sending out annual summaries or tax statements, a bank might go and consolidate all your accounts with them onto one statement, which might be awkward.

agrinnall

Hazzanet wrote: »

When I worked for NatWest in my youth, I remember getting sent down to one of the vaults in a city centre branch to sift through the 'waste' (old paid cheques that were stored for 6 years or so) to obtain the original cheques for the taxman that was investigating a company.

I've learned something new there. For all the years I worked in IT at RBSG I never knew what 'waste' was, it was just one of the many unexplained terms that floated around, and now I know. Thanks Hazzanet :j