HMRC's senior management have done some quite bizarre things over they years since it was created to the point that I presumed that there was little that they could do that would surprise me, but I was wrong. The news that HMRC is to hold a service at Westminster Abbey next month to celebrate its own achievements strikes me as utterly bizarre.
I cannot find HMRC's own press briefing on this planned folly on line, but the Scottish Herald has given it coverage. Apparently it says:
"The aim of the service is to celebrate the vital work that we do in HMRC to collect revenue to fund public services and to benefit society as a whole."
The events will consist of "testimonials, readings and hymns all reflecting the core purpose of HMRC".
Around 1,500 staff from across HMRC are expected to attend, at HMRC expense.
It is hard to know where to start in addressing this folly.
HMRC does, of course, have a core purpose. But it fails at it. The tax gap exceeds £100 billion a year, and that is largely the fault of its management who will have between 2005 and 2015 sacked well over 30,000 staff - or more than a third of its entire workforce. If the service is meant to celebrate job destruction, union provocation and failure to collect tax owing it would note the real achievements of HMRC because it has failed in its core objective.
Then there's the absurd waste of money involved in this exercise. How will people be selected to attend? And to what benefit? Will it be a day out for those who have not been on strike? I hope not, because those who have had the true best interests of HMRC at heart.
And why in such a venue so loaded with royal and state significance when HMRC's job has always been to stand apart from such influences and act with impartiality to collect tax that is due? Does no one in HMRC's senior management have a clue about the history of tax, democracy, the crown, parliament and the people of the country? If they did then this would have been the last place to choose for such a celebration, if one were needed.
And why in London? Bradford could I am sure have provided a location and a large nearby tax office too.
And why religious? In modern day society this is bound to be an affront to many for both religious and political reasons.
And how come when HMRC says that those who strike at HMRC to preserve their jobs and to protect HMRC's ability to collect revenue owing threaten the well being of the country by taking a day off unpaid to make that point and yet HMRC can take thousands out of work for a day at considerable additional cost and the same logic does not apply?
I regret to say that it's impossible to think that this service is anything but an act of self aggrandisement by the Board of HMRC approved for political purposes (as it must have been) by a government that knows that tax revenues to be collected this year will fall considerably short of their budget. As such it stinks of something little short of corruption.
The need for root and branch reform of HMRC senior management becomes ever more apparent by the day.
NB: It is appropriate to note that I work with PCS, the Union who represent many HMRC staff, but I do so because I have views such as those noted here
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HMRC already has 2 annual services inherited from Customs, in All Hallows by the Tower. Plus annual service of Remembrance in Custom House. They are barely acknowledged by management and not that many people are encouraged or even allowed to go. This is clearly nothing to do with honouring either God or St Matthew 🙁
Interesting….any more details on those services e.g. Web links?
Found this http://www.allhallowsbythetower.org.uk/calendar/event.php?event=3197
Interesting that a long and dedicated Google fails to discover any trace now of the Ascension Day Customs service in particular – yet I know that was only abolished in 2001, and the Remembrance and Carol services were still going on last year. There are tantalising links to the National Archive site, but it looks as though you’d have to actually go there to look at the material.
Ascension Day was a historical relic of the Test Acts, which required public servants to communicate in the Church of England as a sign of their political loyalty (plus ca change?) – the requirement for Communion had long lapsed by the 1990s when I last attended and it was no longer compulsory or even much supported, but it was considered disgracefully un-inclusive (as indeed it was originally intended to be) in the new millennium, and done away with.
Remembrance at Custom House was, and is, precisely that and only differs from other long-existing organisations who lost staff in the wars in a slightly greater degree of formality. The Carol Service, again, is similar to lots of others held in all the London churches every year by various public, commercial and charitable entities. None to my recall have ever been other than voluntary, official time and even transport to/from the office was formerly allowed for all three but I suspect time only is now available, if at all, for Remembrance.
So having seen all these relegated to insignificance or discontinued altogether for so long, your post had me wondering if you had been taken in by an unusually cunning spoof. Seems not, though as all the papers are saying it now….
Your comments are interesting. Thanks
And no this is no spoof
The service is on 23 September
By coincidence that’s long been fixed as the day my new report on the tax gap comes out
Life as farce?
Thinking about this-this quote came to mind from Abraham Lincoln (1865_ regarding sovereign currency:
” The circulation of a medium of exchange issued and backed by the Government can be properly regulated and redundancy of issue avoided by withdrawing from circulation such amounts as may be necessary by taxation…”
So does Tax ‘really’ pay for things?
Read the Joy of Tax when it comes out….I address the question
Good reply, Richard !..and all the best for the writing of the book!
Please be accurate.
What you actually mean is “my fictitious and exaggerated estimate of the tax gap exceeds £100bn despite all the evidence to the contrary from those who know better”.
It is utterly impossible that the tax gap is as small as HMRC suggest it to be
But what I note is how off it is that those who hate tax support HMRC on this one issue
“….how off it is”. Murphy’s Rant Law of Typing in action again.
What little things keep you amused
Shame on Abbey for agreeing to host it!
The (sensible) tax gap is the difference between tax paid and tax that should be paid according to the laws of the land.
Your tax gap is the difference between tax paid and tax that would be paid if the laws were changed to align with your personal opinions and prejudices. As such it is effectively meaningless.
By pretending that the former is incorrect (and that your figure is more accurate) is highly misleading.
No: my estimate of the tax gap is the real difference between tax due and actually paid according to current law
My latest estimate is out on 23/9
they are rendering to caesar
Google, Amazon, Starbucks etc are all 100% compliant with the law, yet you count that in your figures…
A great many people think they are not compliant with the spirit of the law
HMRC says in that case they are in the tax gap
A key component of the tax gap is the difference between what HMRC thinks the law provides and what it actually provides. My thoughts on this at http://www.strongerinnumbers.com/blog21.html
Melanie Dawes accepted this in a Select Committee appearance when she said that HMRC removed elements from their calculation of the gap if the courts found HMRC to be incorrect in their interpretation of the law. This only works one way of course – as if the courts agree with HMRC it merely confirms that HMRC were correct to identify that element as part of the tax gap. So the real gap must always be smaller than the one HMRC says exists unless it is assumed that HMRC are always correct, and that does not survive any scrutiny in the light of experience.
It seems fairly clear that Google, Amazon and Starbucks are not actually in HMRC’s estimation of the tax gap.
This, however, assumes, HMRC are willing to test their ideas
In the case of these companies they are not
Your logic fails
You are also, rather bizarrely, assuming that the tax gap only relates to avoidance when by far the largest part is evasion where the IMF have, for example, said that HMRC is not good at finding data outside the declarations they receive
But you have chosen to ignore that
It seems logical that the reason HMRC do not “wish to test their ideas” is that they are fully confident that these companies are in full compliance with the law.
And they know much more about the situation and have access to information that you do not.
Hence their anaylsis is likely to be much more accurate than yours….
PAC was not convinced
Nor am I
Now stop wasting my time
PAC is showboating by politicians trying to deflect from their failings.
As for you, you are one of the least objective commentators in the country on these matters.
Fortunately, neither the PAC nor you are the arbiters of HMRC’s “ideas” (whatever those ideas mean, though I suspect it’s tax compliant behaviour that you dislike). Instead we have judges and courts to do that. And quite right too.
If you think the PAC has had no impact you’re clearly not an objective observer
Around the world the message they delivered has changed debate on tax, and G8 and G20 policy
I’m happy to have played my own part in that too
You ignore the power of democracy and free speech, like so many others on your side of the debate
Are they asking for forgiveness for past blunders and for forgiveness before they raid people’s savings?
No one, for the record, will be raiding anyone’s savings