HMRC published it annual report yesterday.
One of its claims, styled as an achievement, was that it now has only 170 offices compared with 539 in 2005.
That sounds like HMRC is running as far away as possible as it can from you and in a democracy where tax is the consideration in the social contract between the electorate and those who govern them I call that a massive democratic failure.
But I am sure that the big business dominated HMRC Board, who still insist on calling taxpayers customers despite their reluctance to go anywhere near them, hold a very different view. Of the merits of democracy, that is, as well as on office location and its importance.
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And the closures continue, aiming towards only being present in about 15 places in the UK by 2020, with nothing in East Anglia or West of Bristol. Not only have hundreds of offices closed, but the 170 that are left have closed their public counters and now refuse to help people with their tax, a development HMRC cynically praises as better customer service.
The buzzwords in HMRC are “continuous improvement” which in the Board’s looking glass world describes things getting worse and worse.
Wholeheartedly agree
Thank you for this observation.
What’s going on is the neoliberal wet dream – withering the State on the vine by pulling up its roots.
I would not be surprised to find this is the intention of the Big Business “advisors” to HMRC’s board.
But let’s ask ourselves this – would Starbucks boast of REDUCING their number of coffee shops?
HMRC offices don’t cost money, they MAKE money. There should be a tax office in every town – they are as much an essential part of the community as libraries, social work and racial equality officers. The tax person should have a place of honour in civil society, for without them we would live in feral conditions where life is nasty, brutish, and short!
But perhaps that is what Starbucks and the like intend for us, so they can make money. It makes me angry that more people don’t see this.
For once, a post where I 100% agree with your concerns. People pay (suffer) taxes, not computers. So people need to be involved in the process. David Gauke was saying yesterday how he wants to engage people with the tax system through more transparency… but all on-line, digital “engagement”, which rather misses the point.
“HMRC offices don’t cost money, they MAKE money. There should be a tax office in every town”
The period just gone marked the last 10 years before I retired from HMRC. To be honest, hardly anyone ever came into the enquiry centre in person. Maybe 1 or 2 people a day. From the 1980s, I saw us move from 4 shabby small offices in Southampton to one large modern one.
There’s lots wrong with HMRC and I’m glad I’m retired and feel sorry for those left behind but it’s ridiculously simplistic to think HMRC offices ‘make money’ in the way you seem to think it works.
Karl
That may be your opinion Karl
Many, many HMRC officers tell me otherwise and I know that to be true from past experience
Local offices mean local knowledge and local experience and that yields local results
Now people sitting in HMRC offices rarely go out: a Customs officer supposedly responsible for field visits told me recently that he had not left the office for five months
You cannot make money by sitting in a remote office. You make it by being seen in the community and that requires a local base
I beg to differ with you
Have to agree, Richard. When I was a CAB Generalist Adviser, I more than than once took clients just down the road from St Vedast Street to the Tax Office at then end of Prince of Wales Road, near the Foundry Bridge, enabling my clients to resolve some problem quickly.
Very angry these places have been closed, as I used the one in Finchley to resolve a big problem about over-assessment when leaving self-employment in 1999. Invaluable service.
Staff numbers at HMRC will have been cut from 104,000 in 2005 to an estimated 60,000 by 2015 how can they close the tax gap and serve the taxpayer when there will be not staff left? Not to mention the expertise HMRC is losing daily!
The relevant numbers are 92,000 and 56,000
But you are right
Entertain this thought. It’s not real to the UK, but it is real enough in a few smaller countries rich in natural resources.
The thought is that a marvellous government-owned invention means that no tax needs collecting from any citizens. It could be a fuel cell, where hydrogen can be stored safely before combining with oxygen to make energy, and the government has the patent. Or useable fusion technology. Or anything other tech where the UK can pay for health, education, law, welfare, bridges etc without the need for tax revenues.
Would you still make the same claims about taxation still being necessary for there to be a democratic social contract between government and governed? Or would you rejoice that taxation wasn’t necessary?
The resource curse provides the answer to that
On reflection this is a terrifying answer. Your first thought when presented with the idea of government owning a marvellous new technology and how to allocate the new resources is to have a reservation about having it in the first place. That’s scary.
Not everything is benign
To question whether that is the case seems to me to be the first task for a moral philosopher
Oil is the resource that some countries have in sufficient abundance to make all other taxation unnecessary. it does not appear to make them happy.
In the “good old days” when I was in Customs and Excise, it was the norm that every VAT trader was visited on average every 3 years, we knew our patch well – who the rogues were locally, and consequently the VAT system was well controlled. Now it seems as you say that HMRC are abandoning whole areas of the country and the evaders will be laughing their way to the bank! In addition the traders who had genuine problems were able to visit a local office for expert help instead of as now happens having to hang on the phone for ages to wait to then speak to a poorly trained adviser who is reading from a script.
Precisely
Taxation predates democracy by at least 2000 years. Taxation without democracy has also led to violence e.g. 1776. And even today in the UK there are millions of tax payers excluded from the democratic process. They are the estimated 2 million EU nationals in the UK who pay taxes who are barred from GEs and from the referendum in 2017. 16/17 year olds can legally work and pay taxes and they too do not have the franchise. And when a government borrows money those under voting age have to deal with the repayments – they could generate tax to pay the interest, default, print the money, or pass the debt on to their own children but this is still taxation in the old French sense of an impot or imposition in this case of limited choices.
There never has been a system where tax is the cement that holds a democratic society together.
Shall we talk about modern taxation in modern society?
And if we do it seems that your entire gripe is that voting rights do not reflect the tax base
I take that as your agreement with my argument, but that democracy is flawed
I think you very clearly fail to make your point
From the BBC online on HMRCs performance in reducing tax credit fraud, part of the article noted that the
“Belfast-based Synnex-Concentrix UK Ltd, a division of a US outsourcing giant, employed in 2014-15 to tackle fraud and error, had not performed as well as expected and its savings target was now “not achievable”. Synnex-Concentrix only generated savings of £500,000 in 2013-14 compared with the original estimate of £285m.” The report does not say how much Synnex charged for its services.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33571596
Another private sector pup