The Guardian reports this morning that:
Figures published by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) show that the average time people spent waiting in a phone queue to HMRC was 10 minutes and 53 seconds — more than double the wait from a year ago. The figures also showed 34.5% of calls were cut off, significantly up from the 20.5% recorded last year, and less than one in 10 calls about tax credits were answered in under two minutes — down from one in three a year ago.
The average waiting time for tax inquiries rose from four minutes 42 seconds in 2013 to almost 12 minutes in September 2014. For tax credits the wait doubled from seven minutes 13 seconds in 2013 to 14 minutes 28 seconds in 2014.
I noted declining standards of service from HMRC as an issue in my report on the tax gap and the consequence of cuts in HMRC's budget for PCS, the union that represents the majority of staff at our tax authority, published last autumn but the implication of these reports is that the anecdotal evidence that I was given last year that things were much worse than official statistics showed now seems to have been confirmed.
This, of course, is not by chance. It is the policy of the HMRC board, that appears largely accountable to people drawn from the Big 4 Accountants and big business, to cut services supplied by HMRC. So it has closed Enquiry Centres, and is drastically cutting front line staff, especially in the area of personal taxation, all in the name of supposed efficiency that means that about £120 billion of tax goes uncollected each year and vast numbers of people cannot get the help they need to pay the right amount of tax in the right place at the right time, which should be HMRC's basic job.
If you want to undermine tax collection and the capacity of government to govern though a lack of resources being available to do the job this is, of course, just about the best way to achieve the goal. If you also want to undermine fairness in society and create an unlevel playing field in business where cheats go unchallenged this is also a great way of achieving that goal.
If you want social justice, fair taxation and equality this is a disaster.
I am quite clear that HMRC's board and the government are on the wrong side in this debate and that debate is not pragmatic, it is fundamentally ethical. My accusation is that they are sabotaging the tax system, deliberately. It's a big accusation and one I think wholly justified by the evidence.
The consequence is that HMRC needs reform from ministerial and Board level downwards, and without both we will not have the tax system we need in this country.
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The ‘service’ part of ‘civil service’ now seems to have departed . Revenues will only improve with more trained staff and easier access which means not wholly allied to online services.
Richard, the results of the Civil Service Staff survey were quite interesting. I cannot confirm where in the ‘league table’ HMRC sits; but it is clearly right at the bottom end. The responses to all the questions are collated to give an overall Staff Engagement score. (The higher the score the better.) In HMRC engagement is 43%; 1% down from last year and 16% below the Civil Service median.
Sections where HMRC really suffers are:
– Leadership and Managing Change: 28%; 1% down and 15% below CS median.
– Pay and Benefits: 20%; down 5% and 8% lower than CS median.
Some specific questions are revealing:
“I am proud to work for HMRC” 27%, a staggering 32% below the CS median
“Overall I have confidence in the decisions made by senior managers”: 22%, which is 21% below CS median
“When changes are made in HMRC they are usually for the better”: 18% (the lowest score in the survey) and is 11% below the CS median.
Clearly, not a lot of confidence in management exists among the staff.
So if staff morale seems bad enough, the other thing to note is that PCS promoted a boycott of the survey, and it resulted in a large number of very disgruntled people choosing to not register their views; if they had, you could guarantee the results would have been worse still.
Rhetorical question: how would a company in the private sector survive if only 22% of its people had faith in management, and only 20% were happy with remuneration?
Thanks for noting this
It’s very worrying
As an aside, Richard, I’ve been observing the “like” and “dislike” figures for the comments for a while now and have to say I find them mystifying and bizarre. For example, how can 13 people actually dislike this comment from you? That’s just one example, I dare say you’ve spotted many more, as I have. Does the “like/dislike” function on the comments (as opposed to the “like post” for the actual blog) serve any purpose?
I am arranging for it to be turned off
It seems to have only given trolls fun
(Apologies for wasting your time, but your article strikes a chord. I’m NOT requesting advice.)
My impression is that the Customer Service side of the Tax Office could be made far more efficient.
For example: a retired pensioner on a teacher’s salary is required to complete a tax return every year. All their income is paid as pensions by the Government, so doesn’t the Government already know their income & tax paid at source? (There are savings accounts, but don’t these inform the Government of the interest & tax paid at source?) With the exception of being widowed, the situation has been static for some twenty years. Yet recent years produce tax demands, where earlier years produced tax rebates (in spite of the Government’s claim to be raising allowances), neither of which contain explanations. Numerous phone calls to the Tax Office resulted in different advisors, not one talking to the others or to other Government departments, giving different responses (& possibly misleading advice), rebates & demands. (Income for the future year should be declared, rather than for the past year?) I suggested a face-to-face interview at the local Tax Office for proper resolution, but these now seem to have been closed. The tax paid each year seems to be a lottery depending on the advisor that processes the mandatory return.
Then the pensioner received a letter suggesting they may not be required to complete an annual return. They phoned the given number several times, but no-one answered. The return was forgotten, a £100 penalty received & promptly paid. Then in response to nothing, the Tax Office sent a letter claiming that “ignorance was not an excuse” which got an angry response.
In simple, static situations like this, why cannot the Tax Office issue an annual statement containing a detailed breakdown of all income known to have been received and all tax paid at source that is accurate and does not result in either rebates or demands?
In Sweden tax returns are issued ore-filled with automatically notified data
Mike, your tale of woe above does not surprise me. I’ve been in HMRC for 11 years, and during that time, the department has lost nearly half it’s workforce, been subject to endless ‘reorganisations’ and the staff have seen every aspect of their jobs get worse. Whilst some sterling work has been done in tackling big league tax avoidance by larger companies and wealthy individuals (as a response to the political furore raised by people like Richard), the level of service provided to the general public has gone through the floor, as your example shows.
Hardly surprising, given that so many experienced staff have been given the boot, or got out early because they’re sick of the way things have gone. They have been replaced by inexperienced people on temporary contracts, who cannot, with the best will in the world, provide a good service. None of the staff I know in my office have any faith in anything said by the board of HMRC; all we know is, everything just keeps getting worse.
Mike, if a return is not required (and from what you say, in this case it clearly wasn’t) then HMRC will normally cancel the penalty. Although as this one’s been paid it may be too late for that.
It sounds as though the PAYE coding notices weren’t correct (it’s always difficult with pensions, as there are usually two sources of income), and the taxpayer hadn’t realized he could have dropped out of self-assessment ages ago. It’s the sort of thing that a tax advisor could have sorted out in a moment, though HMRC should have enough resources to deal with it on the phone.
I’ve had a few people in that sort of situation. They come to me asking me to act as their agent as they’re having trouble with HMRC, I give them a phone number and a few useful things to say, and they’re all sorted: no need to do a return, and no fees to pay 🙂 Win-win – or three wins, if you count HMRC not having to process a pointless return.
Richard, have to agree on your decision to turn off the Like/Dislike buttons, as the trolls have turned it into a farce.
However,I can’t help observing how even here they betray their intellectual bankruptcy, since the Like/Dislike button is surely a proxy for, even a symbolic representation of, the “freedom of choice” so beloved of the free-marketeers of the cult of neo-liberalism, and, true to form, even here they can’t restrain themselves from trying to stitch up the market in their favour!
🙂
And to prove Andrew’s point your smiley face got 3 likes and 7 dislikes. Clearly using emoticons causes offense to some people!
They are turned off now
I did get a note from one of them trolls saying they were using them
Not any more…..
Richard
I’d leave them on. If the trolls are wasting their time pressing “like’ & ‘dislike’ buttons it stops them doing anything more damaging.
It gives them a change from ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ poor things.
Meanwhile back in the real world………….