Peter Saxton wrote:

I have sent the following email to the Post Office:

"My local Post Offices refuse to give me a receipt for receiving my
money so I can put it with my accounting records so I can correctly
prepare my tax return and have evidence of the payment if HMRC wish to
check.

They say that I can use the receipt of postage instead. I need the
receipt of postage kept with the letter to resolve any dispute with
the recipient.

Please explain why the Post Office refuses to provide receipts for
money received and wishes to inconvenience their customers."

If you intend to complain formally, you should use the correct
terminology. As written it makes you sound like a crackpot (which
I'm becoming decreasingly sure you are not).

There is no such thing as a "receipt of postage", I think you must be
referring to a "certificate of posting". Your terminology is particularly
confusing because "postage" is the fee they charge for conveying the item
of mail, so in a sense "postage" *means* money and therefore a "receipt
of postage", if it existed, would be precisely the document you require
for your accounting records.

Your difficulty seems to arise from the fact that post offices now
generally issue combined or dual-purpose documents which, in addition
to being receipts for money, which is their main function, also happen
to act as certificates of posting.

I can understand where you're coming from, that it's neater to have
two documents (one for your accounting records and one for your
correspondence file), I don't see why you can't just use the original
receipt for your accounts, and make a copy of it for the correspondence
file. You could even dispense with copying it, and instead just write
a note on your carbon copy of the letter telling yourself where in your
accounting files the original document may be found, should it ever be
needed. If you keep accounting records in date order, even that may not
be necessary.

Actually, the old-style Certificate-of-Posting cards are still available
and are what would be used when you turn up with the appropriate postage
stamps already affixed to the letter (so you wouldn't need to buy any).
You fill in the card with the recipient's address and they date stamp it
for you.

Perhaps your mistake was to ask for a separate receipt. You should have
asked for a separate certificate of posting. :-)