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Every little helps!
Those job cuts will certainly speed up responses to correspondence from the public and accountants. Well done HMRC
If you ran a business with an annual turnover of £460 billion but with a "takings " gap of £35 billion would your forward plan be to cut staff to save on the wages bill or to retask part of the workforce to collect as much of the missing takings as possible.
How many proceeds of crime reports did HMRC look into in the last 24 mths and how much did they recoup as a result? How much PAYE has been written off for the lack of trained staff to chase it up. How many Companies are set up, traded for a year or so and binned by Company House because accounts have not been submitted and of course HMRC don't have the staff to chase up any potential liability. From above I quote:-
"Staff targets include 1,500 in personal taxes and compliance, and 500 in debt management"
Who makes these decisions I ask, as it looks to me like the economics of the lunatic asylum?
"Long Term Plans"
They do not have any plans.......
They used to refer to them as aspirations.
You wait, they will dump the FTAs who have at least some experience and within months will appoint cheaper novices to start the cycle all over again.
God help us all!
Nudging Required
The only way this will improve HMRC quality of service is if only the cr*p staff are 'volunteered' for the exit. Somehow in a heavily unionised poorly managed organisation like HMRC I don't see that happening.
Good news for private sector tax departments though.
Having a joke
Surely this has to be a joke??? We've been told several times by staff at HMRC that they are short staffed as explanations for the several month delays in dealing with things - especially VAT or CIS related.
I suppose they will just be expecting us Accountants to cover even more work for them, yet alone what will happen with actually investigating any tax fraud or debt recovery etc to bring in revenue.
Makes no sense
And in the same week that the government announced that increased collection of outstanding / evaded taxes will cover the cost of the gas / electricity levy changes.
No joined up thinking whatsoever.
Why should we expect anything else?
We have to realise that most people go into politics because they like the lifestyle. They don't have any desire to improve the lives of the population.
More and more we find that the decisions politicians make are simply ridiculous.
They may talk about improving things but they say that to get elected then they will go back to getting their snouts in the trough. There may be a lot of hard working MPs but once they start progressing they have to change otherwise they will be distrusted by their colleagues.
And it will never change- Peter
As long as the politicos know that the British people will do nothing but moan.
Start a political party
As long as the politicos know that the British people will do nothing but moan.
I know that is my plan. I will announce it here.
Our manifesto will be based on the most sensible things that need changing.
I am getting my mail delivered by the Royal Mail and TNT. TNT also gives some mail to Royal Mail to deliver. Presently I seem to get one and sometimes two deliveries a day. I'm not thinking that is efficient or sensible.
Politics
We are short of money...I know... lets fire the people who collect it
Yep that works.
BTW if you have recently been made redundant from HMRC and live near the GU post code and you have 10 years tax experience and a CTA certificate....I might have a job here for you
See already theres a silver lining...its much better here :)
Do the people
who make these decision ever actually visit the offices of HMRC? Talk to the staff? No, of course not- these decisions are made by career civil servants safe in the knowledge that their jobs are safe.
Huge inefficient computer programs poorly instigated and amazingly expensive have killed the budget, meaning they need to lay off more workers at the coal face.
What we need rather than 'protect my empire' civil servants and politicians is some joined up thinking.
It's high time we had a modern tax system that used ONE number for all taxes, just add a letter at the end to define what it is, one account with HMRC where everything is reconciled, over/under payments re assigned automatically and companies, businesses and individuals can access and see at a glance where they stand.
Then bolster the debt recovery section and investigations side and get a better reporting system between sections of the department- if employment income is reported under RTI then this should feed through to DWP automatically for benefits etc, not have to report it three or four times to various departments increasing paperwork and shredding effiecency.
As someone who meets HMRC on a daily basis, most of them struggle to do the job with at least one hand tied behind their back and with so many reports to file and stats to keep it's amazing they find time to actually do their jobs at all!
brilliant
suppose bit like the company in deep trouble getting rid of their credit controlller to save money. By the time you take into account the loss to the treasury of tax/NIC + possible benefit claims etc the saving is probably about £50.
How about putting that guy who used to chair the co-op in charge of HMRC ? Seems sensible to me.
HMRC Contractor Job Losses
"In a statement, HMRC said: "These are fixed term contract staff whose contracts are coming to an end – these employees never were permanent staff," a spokesperson said."
... but are they being taxed as permanent employees?
yes you all know best dont you
is it possible that HMRC are correct that they are overstaffed in all the wrong areas. tackling evasion is not best achieved by just having more staff you dont work harder you work smarter
Fantastic
Does this mean that my letters will be answered quicker than the 5 weeks it's taking now - of course not!
As for the encouragement to use online services, when I last emailed HMRC on a matter through their secure email system on their website their response was to put it in writing in a letter!!
Wow
A great idea to improve tax collection and answer queries. If the government wants to save more money it could close the hospitals and prisons .. yep it all makes sense to me. NOT!
Sheer Madness
HMRC cannot cope as it is. I am sure that most of us strive to get the best tax answer for our clients, while remaining within the law and retaining our professional integrity. But I shudder to think how much tax is lost by HMRC having inadequate resources to deal with deliberate under-declaration or even misunderstandings of the many technical issues involved. But then I suppose there are many out there who thrive on an inefficent HMRC. We'll just have to get used to that woman telling us more often that there is lots of useful information on their website, when all we want to do is talk to someone. Maybe it's time I retired (if I could afford it)
Online Services
The main reason people are "increasingly availing Online Services" is because HMRC are forcing people down that route with insistence that most tax reports such as RTI, VAT, corporation tax etc are only submissible online. I wonder if people would increasingly avail themselves of HMRC's online services if there was any choice over the filing of such tax reports. It is the most frustrating site I have ever come across, half the downloadable forms are missing, the search engine is awful and when you do get a problem with HMRC Online Services the best you can hope for is a call back from the HMRC that more often than not never happens. Well done HMRC!
Same old same old
Everything is fine and working out just as it should.
petersaxton said...
"We have to realise that most people go into politics because they like the lifestyle. They don't have any desire to improve the lives of the population ... There may be a lot of hard working MPs but once they start progressing they have to change otherwise they will be distrusted by their colleagues".
I agree.
But I think all MP's go into it to 'snout-up' in the trough; enough time has gone by for no-one to be fooled by thinking they will make a difference. Surely?
Anyway, what are we complaining about?
We have everything we want.
We have the politicians we want.
We have the government we want.
We have the industry we want.
We have the wars we want.
We have the world we want.
We love it. Don't we?
HMRC Annual report
The figures shown below are extracted fro m HMRC annual report and show the average cost of collecting £I of tax is less than 1penny. The "expensive "bit is tax credits and even that is getting cheaper to administer year on year. I would say that this business model would be hard to screw up but a combination of the current Board with the help of one or two enthusiastic Politicians are doing their level best to do exactly that.
Unit costs (pence per £ collected/paid out)
-2012 13
-2011 12
Collecting Income Tax (Self Assessment and Pay As You Earn)
1.00
1.02
Collecting Corporation Tax
0.76
0.73
Collecting National Insurance Contributions
0.27
0.28
Collecting VAT
0.63
0.63
Administering Personal Tax Credits
1.43
1.55
Administering Child Benefits
0.57
0.59
Revenue Job Losses
I fear that while Revenue & Customs is run by people who know nothing about tax and care not a jot about delivery of service, nothing will change. Such younger staff as have been recruited, are not well trained any more and the older increasingly demotivated ones that were good are leaving as soon as they can. I gather the department has the lowest degree of job satisfaction of any government department. As for office closures, these will follow as night follows day. The department has all but given up on investigations, except the specially targetted ones. It's hard to believe that a bunch of properly trained Tax Inspectors handling the usual caseload of investigations wouldn't bring in more than they cost.
Job Losses ? ? ?
What's the problem ? Support the independence of Scotland and close the Scot. call centres! Job done! (I know it's a a bit tongue in cheek)