Hundreds of Mr A N OTHERs discovered on payrolls
Don't take it personally... your bosses aren't
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If you take a look at employers' PAYE paperwork, the UK's most popular surnames are getting a run for their money - by an army of Mr Unknowns and Mrs Dummys.
According to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), employers frequently send in PAYE forms with the wrong data on them, leading to incorrect amounts of tax being taken from their workers.
Common mistakes in the data were incorrect surnames, most of which seem to have originated as placeholders when an administrator did not have the correct information to hand.
Around 820 people in the tax year 2009/10 had the surname Unknown, while 500 people were labelled A N Other, 128 staff members were called Mr/Mrs Dummy, and 572 employees were branded with family names ranging from X to XXXXXX.
The 100 or so staff members that were named according to their job title may have been a result of their employer having misread the form, with 75 people called Casual, 11 Cleaners, nine Workers and six Students.
There were also 40 people who were either vampires, gods or the victims of a typo, since they were apparently at least 200 years old.
The taxman released the information in a bid to get companies to be a bit more careful about how they fill in the paperwork.
"We really want employers to check that they are sending us the right details for all their employees, to make life easier for them, HMRC and their employees," Jim Harra, director of customer operations at HMRC, said in a canned statement.
"Around 80 per cent of errors in employee data are due to an incorrect name, date of birth or national insurance number – straightforward information that can be collected and checked quite easily," he added. ®
COMMENTS
Hate to be a grammar nazi but...
"have" is the word you are groping for. Would HAVE, not would of. Along with the spelling errors, your instead of you're, and the non-sentences, nobody is likely to actually notice whatever point it is you are trying to make.
ANON because of the bloody spelling?
Error checkers
There are some branches of the Government that do seem to employ error checkers.....although without even a single brain cell of common sense to share between them.
Last year I had a form returned to me, with a covering letter telling me that I had failed to fill in the form correctly because the postcode was missing. My error was putting the postcode in the address box instead of the Postcode box.
This letter was sent to me addressed with the correct postcode.
Aaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh
Icon of alcohol 'cos that is the only thing that makes it better.
might be a bit off-topic
speaking of "errors" in payroll, this remind me of the time when we installed a payroll system at a big organization that was still using the old _book_ system. Many people in HR and accounts were against the implementation of the payroll system but management insisted and it was implemented.
later the management complained to us that our system is "wrong" since it shows that they have above 10,000 workers (don't remember the correct number), while their old paper system was showing an extra 300 workers (again, I don't remember the correct number). So we told them to call their auditors and have things checked.
it turned out that some of the people in accounts and HR were literally pocketing the salaries of 10 or more _virtual_ employees each month plus their own salaries!
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