The Press Association has reported:
Revenue and Customs is to recruit up to 1,000 extra staff to tackle delays in getting through to call centres. The move is aimed at achieving a target of answering 90% of calls, two years earlier than planned.
Around £9 million of extra investment will be made this year, and up to £25 million in 2013-14 to reach the call centre industry standard by next spring.
As they also note:
Performance has improved from 48% of calls handled in 2010/11 to 74% in 2011/12, but HMRC said more needed to be done to provide a better service.
Those statistics are astonishing. So badly has HMRC been denuded of staff, and so low was morale under Dave Hartnett, that less than half of phone calls were answered. The fact that this staff increase has been announced days after he left is, I am sure, no coincidence.
But there's much more to the statistics than that. This is the most basic job HMRC does, taking calls and with dealing routine enquiries. If staff to do that have been reduced to this level of inefficiency by management choice and action what must have happened to more complex operations, like the tackling tax gap?
HMRC like to say that this is just £35 billion and only an issue of limited concern. They're wrong on the scale of the issue, as I explain here. And their attempts to close it are half hearted - not helped by Osborne's desire to promote corporate tax haven abuse.
I've long said we need 20,000 new HMRC staff, located in local tax offices, dealing with taxpayers (not customers) face to face. Then we'd really close down the tax gap. And at £25,000 a head (HMRC's estimate, mine is twice that, bringing my total cost to £1 billion) I think £20 billion a year could be recovered.
But whilst HMRC deny the scale of the problem - to suit an agenda of small government that reflects the corporate capture of the management of the department - that's not going to happen and we're going to get cuts in public services instead.
That's a choice, and it's the wrong choice.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Your argument for the large tax gap is the grey economy, so why is having an army of local tax staff who can deal with taxpayer going to solve this. It may help erroneous or incomplete return, but unless they turn into PIs following people around to see if they are taking cash in hand, I fail to see that it will help. Surely spending significant amounts on IT systems that can look for cash movements in the banking system and reconcile asset ownership with tax returns would be better?
Oh, that would undoubtedly help.
Even simpoler things – like demanding tax returns from all limited companies would help too
But local knowledge is vital in tackling tax abuse
And we’ve lost it
In a country famous for its tax avoidance activity it is ironic that the Spanish Exchequer is now (by force of survival) introducing the very latest IT systems to track cash movements in all banks and businesses. The Land Registry computers, the motor tax computers and even the “utilities” computers can now exchange information to build a profile on all nationals and immigrants living in the country. Those not legally tax registered (and not filing an annual tax return) are also being tracked and face very heavy fines… but not as half as heavy as those found to have have been dodging tax via secret accounts in tax havens like the Isle of Man.
Shades of 1984 perhaps – but all driven by urgent economic necessity!
I applaud that
Interesting though that I gather some expats are leaving as a result – fearing paying taxes they did not know existed
The EU financial crisis is causing many ex-pats living in Spain to consider returning home to the UK. The main obstruction to this is financial in that it is almost impossible to sell property at anything more than half price — or less.
Many ex-Pats either did not bother to register with the Spanish tax authority (La Hacienda) or chose to remain ignorant of their legal obligations — a situation exacerbated by a lethargic government. Now government, desperate for revenue, is clamping down by demanding tax return accountability from everybody — and to achieve this they have some impressive weapons in their armoury including extensive use of personal bar codes and identity cards to ensure nobody escapes the net and the accuracy of every tax return is fully validated.
Spain is definitely NOT the place for tax dodgers anymore!
Which may help explain the (providing houses sell) exodus.
Of course, I should hate to say this to an accountant,but would not a thorough simplification of the tax laws help? I gather they make a voluminous publication.
The only people that would helped is more tax avoiders
The loopholes would be bigger
They seem to be saying that they now aim to answer our calls two years earlier than they orginally planned for. How long did they originally plan fto have us waiting on the line/ Five years?
The press release states “Performance has improved from 48% of calls handled in 2010/11 to 74% in 2011/12, but HMRC said more needed to be done to provide a better service.”
So it’s now only a quarter of calls that don’t get answered.
I suspect most people who call the tax office do so only after pulling together all the relevant (and sometimes irrelevant) information they think HMRC may need to deal with their call. It is therefore deeply frustrating then for their call not to be answered. This then will result in a “well, if they can’t be bothered to answer the phone, then why should I be bothered to sort out my tax affairs …” attitude.
I also note the press release talks about an “industry standard” of 90% for answering calls; I’m guessing however this is for commercial organisations’ call centres (BT, insurance companies, the AA, etc.). It’s very different for HMRC with a monopoly dealing with taxpayers and benefit claimants (NOT “customers”) – HMRC should be aiming for 95% plus for most of the year, going down to 90% at busy periods (eg, tax credits renewals in the run up to 31 July, and income tax peaks in September and January, etc.).
Agreed