HMRC issued their stuff with 20 rebuttals of the allegations made by the Parliamentary Accounts Committee before Christmas. I got sent a copy. I was fascinated by one comment:
17. HMRC have very few people with “deep knowledge of tax affairs”
We have more than 15,000 people working in tax professional roles here in HMRC. Most are expert in tax law and more than 2,000 have completed our four-year tax training and development programme. Our Tax Academy will ensure that we have the right number of tax professionals going forward.
So there are 2,000 fully trained people at HMRC.
The Chartered Institute of Tax has 15,000 members.
And add to that the members specialising in tax in the ICAEW, ACCA, Law Society, The Bar, Scottish and Irish institutes, and many more.
In that case does anyone think 2,000 fully qualified tax inspectors is enough? Only Dave Hartnett, presumably.
When will we start investing properly in tax collection and stop these people on whom the tax life blood of our economy depends being outnumbered.
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It is a odd the way that public service is forced to ape business practice (as idealised in the neoliberal fantasy world) when it comes to some things: but not others. HMRC is a particularly pointed example. The “income” of HMRC comes from assessing, and collecting tax, including enforcement. If a “business model” was what was sought, it follows that they would keep employing and training tax inspectors until diminishing returns set in. But that obvious part of the process is nowhere to be seen. A tax inspector currently brings in much more than he or she costs. And that is despite the disparity of resource between Inspectors and the Accountants they face.
Tax Inspectors are not “fully trained” in the way they used to be either: their working conditions have deteriorated (as an example, they are in “open plan offices” now, and have no private space in which to work on complicated files requiring a lot of concentration) : HMRC as a whole has been diverted from its role because they now have responsibility for making payments as well as receiving them: a change which was nothing less than disastrous for the poor, since the tax office has neither experience of poverty nor, at least at the outset, any mechanism at all for speedy payments or for emergency assistance when credits were not processed, or something went wrong: no surprise there. Their previous “customers” did not mind at all if there was delay since the money was going the other way. But hell for the new “customers” dependent on the money for this week’s food.
The changes to the HMRC are the same as the changes to all other public services: the ostensible introduction of “business values” on grounds of efficiency: masking a dismantling of the service and seemingly deliberately designed to ensure that down the line the politicians and their paymasters can point and say “public service does not work”
Hi Richard, it’s the NICE Peter Jones here… Happy New Year! I don’t know how well connected you are to the local lefties.. There’s a meeting in Wisbech chaired by Bob Crowe, featuring John Hendry QC, talking about employment rights etc.. It’s on the 21st Jan. Interested? I can forward you emails about other ‘leftfests’ too if you so wish. Best regards, Peter.
Please send me details
interesting – you are right, 2000 is ridiculous.
as for Fionas comment – all the accountancy firms are open plan, I dont see why Inspectors need their own offices (and thus a higher property bill for the public purse) when the thousands of private practice advisors dont have one.
Open plan is crap
Anyone with any sense realises that
i disagree (no doubt it has been some time since you sat in open plan). Having experienced both my experience has been that open plan fosters far more communication amongst team members than everyone shut away in their own individual offices.
most switched on businesses have break out rooms or telephone rooms for confidential matters (although I doubt whether HMRC do !)
I tried it
I found it massively hindered productivity for senior people
It may have helped with ‘teams’
But I’m not and never have been a great team player
It’s a massively over-rated skill in much of business designed to encourage ordinariness
As you note Richard there is a formidable line-up of players in a combined team specialising in (avoiding) tax including the ICAEW, ACCA, Law Society, the Bar, Scottish and Irish institutes hundreds of “advisors” banks and finance companies, possibly the duplicitous OECD and many others. Literally hundreds of thousands of “professionals” assisting in the business of avoiding (allegedly legally) paying tax.
And all the HMRC has is 2,000 trained (demoralised by complex tax laws) inspectors.
It’s just a ride in the park for the Crown Dependencies …
While the UK economy goes down the tube.
My wife has been sent a bill by HMRC. It is completely inaccurate but she wants to do the right thing and pay the right amount at the right time (where have I heard that before!), even though as we live offshore it would be very hard for HMRC to enforce it.
She phoned up and was put in a queue for over 30 minutes, at which point she hung up. There are no contact details on the bill about who to contact whether by e-mail, letter or phone. It is like dealing with a low-cost airline, totally shocking.
When will governments (of all hues) learn that cutting costs in places like HMRC, passport control, indeed anywhere that requires interaction between people and the civil service is misguided, because there is a huge cost implication in requiring people to queue for hours for a service that takes minutes to deliver. Had HMRC answered the phone yesterday they would have £10k in their account today and could close the file. Instead they will have to enter into e-mail tennis to achieve the same result in a few weeks time.