HMRC avoids the looming axe in Spending Review
HMRC was spared any large scale spending cuts in the government's Comprehensive Spending Review, but the department is expected to make efficiency savings of 25% through enhanced use of new technology.
In his Commons speech, George Osborne confirmed plans to invest £900m to address HMRC’s tax gap and tackle avoidance and evasion, a measure the Chancellor claimed will bring in an additional £7bn a year in tax revenues by 2014-15.
While giving with one hand, however, the chancellor applied pressure with the other, demanding that the department makes overall resource savings of 15%, with efficiency savings of 25% to come from rationalising technology investments and maximising savings from IT contracts.
Osborne said the department would invest in new technology to “improve risk assessment capability, better join up taxpayer information and streamline internal processes.”
He also insisted that savings would be made by renegotiating IT and other procurement contracts, and that administration costs would be chopped by a third through reductions corporate services and back office support functions.
The chancellor also announced £100m of investment to improve the operation of PAYE for both employers and individuals. This news follows the publication of a recent discussion document detailing new proposals to reform the system, including the implementation of real time data submission and centralised deductions, where HMRC would calculate the tax and NICs due on an employee's income. The PAYE system came under fire last month after reconciliation backlogs and an avalanche of erroneous new records came to light in the wake of the department's transition to the new NPS computer system.
The Spending Review also contained a commitment to delivering £8bn of tax credit fraud and error savings by 2014-15.
Analysis and reactions - can the IT systems cut it?
But senior accounting figures warned of the risk of over-stretching the system. Given previous problems, can HMRC squeeze 25% efficiency savings out of its existing systems, pondered CIOT tax policy director John Whiting.
Continued...
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Invest???
I love the spin. It is not spending it is investing. Is this a one off amount that will pull in a one off amount, or is it the total amount over a number of years?
How much greater would the return be if the money was spent on getting the little things right? The public would have some faith in HMRC, which at the moment has less credibility than the Flat Earth Society.
If its systems worked, it would have considerable numbers of staff within its own ranks who would not be fighting fires and manning complaint handling teams.
If it dropped its PR staff writing mission statements and kept on some of the experienced Inspectors, it would have credible people to deal with evasion. Instead the credible people are paid off because they are "too expensive".
The problem is that it seems to have managers who do not manage, leaving the staff at the sharp end unlead and opinions ignored. The call handling system means too much distance between case workers and public contact. Recent experience has shown where partnership and personal returns are under enquiry one case worker is not even aware of the other. It is pointless throwing away money for a new initiative, when it will simply redeploy the deck chair attendants to stoking the boilers on HMRC Titanic.
£100 million for new IT systems for PAYE?
That is a fraction of what I'd expect even phase 1 of their proposals (Real Time Information) to cost them.
And the cost of implementing phase 2 (centralised deductions) would be a couple of orders of magnitude greater.
I wonder if that £100 million is a finger in the air, or a properly costed proposal for delivering all the design, development, infrastructure, training, testing, liaison for phase 1 within the planned timescale (April 2012). It seems like a remarkably round number. Bear in mind that even phase 1 involves completely changing how every employer in the land handles starters, leavers, and HMRC reporting requirements. It involves changing all the website pages and paper publications that instruct employers. It involves dealing with the thousands of organisations that write payroll software to make sure that everyone is going to be ready on time. It involves making sure that every employer in the land is ready for the new systems at launch...
Then, in order to implement the greatly more complicated phase 2 all the work done by HMRC and UK payroll software suppliers to implement phase 1 would have to be thrown away. Possibly after just 3 years of usage according to the proposed timetable.
£900 million
So how do you deploy that £900 million to close the tax gap ? You need - must need - well trained people. It takes four years to train what we used to call a fully-trained inspector - maybe you could cut that. HMRC has not got trained people about it undeployed : that's why the forecasts are optimistic.