The committee which monitors HMRC’s compliance has seen its scope cut and its members gagged by confidentially clauses.
The HMRC charter – known as Your Charter - governs the relationship between HMRC and its “customers” (aka taxpayers). It has been in place since 2009 after a long, hard battle to get the earlier “taxpayers charter” reinstated when the Inland Revenue merged with Customs & Excise in April 2005.
The charter lists nine taxpayer rights (what HMRC should do) and three taxpayer obligations (what taxpayers should do). The HMRC obligations include promises to:
- Treat the taxpayer as honest
- Treat taxpayers even-handedly
- Accept that someone else can represent the taxpayer
- Do all it can to keep the cost of dealing with HMRC as low as possible.
The last point is quite laughable when you consider the costs incurred when trying to contact HMRC by phone, and the number of times correspondence is lost. The promise to acknowledge the taxpayer’s representative also rings hollow every time letters are sent directly to the taxpayer and not copied to his agent.
HMRC’s performance against its obligations under the charter has been monitored by the independent Charter Advisory Committee, which reported annually on progress and priorities for HMRC to improve. However, that committee, chaired since 2012 by Ian Young, tax technical manager at the ICAEW Tax Faculty, has now been disbanded.
A new Charter Committee is due to take its place in December 2015. HMRC advertised for external members to join that committee by publishing the Charter Committee Candidate Pack on its webpage on 22 October 2015. If you are interested in taking up one of the four non-HMRC positions you need to act fast, as applications need to be submitted by midday on 9 November 2015.
However, you may find it difficult to comply with the “other outside activities” condition for the role, which specifies that the committee member “should not do anything or take on any outside work which might conflict with the interests of HMRC or which is inconsistent with your role on the committee”. Young feels this is quite Orwellian – anyone who acts for clients in disputes with HMRC is barred from applying to be a member of the new committee.
What’s worse, the members of the new committee will be gagged by the Commissioners of Customs and Excise Act 2005 (CRCA), s 3, as they will be required to sign a declaration of confidentially. That will leave them open to criminal sanctions if they disclose information which is held by HMRC “in connection with a function of HMRC”.
Young says this is not a practical way to run the new committee. Any new committee members who are also members of professional bodies will find it impossible to consult with their fellow professional body members about relevant matters in order to inform the contribution they make to the new Committee.
Young is also concerned that only four members of the new Charter Committee will be external to HMRC, out of a total membership of eight or ten. In 2009 when the original charter oversight committee was set up, the minister assured parliament that the committee would contain a majority of non-HMRC people. That assurance is not being respected.
Young is concerned that the new Charter Committee will not be sufficiently robust or independent to provide a meaningful oversight of HMRC’s performance.