Jason Croke
Member Since: 6th Mar 2020
Likes: 16
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Jason has over 20 years’ experience working exclusively in indirect taxes (VAT, import duty, SDLT) with owner-managed businesses, corporates and not for profit sectors. He particularly enjoys challenging HMRC decisions, representing clients in tribunals or during inspections.
Experience includes land and property, partial exemption and European VAT matters but equally happy with a VAT registration too. VAT and duty is a complicated subject, his main strength is being able to explain complex law in an easy-to-understand manner. It has often been said that he actually makes the subject of VAT sound interesting, but we will let you be the judge of that! In his spare time, cycling, regular (but not obsessive) trips to the gym, skiing in winter and hiking in the summer and is married with one teenage daughter.
My answers
...and lets be clear here, all this talk of digital, its a smoke screen.
Yes, you can enter details onto an online form and press submit, you can change an address, bank details, all sorts of stuff BUT none of this is processed digitally by HMRC, they're literally printing out your data that you have input onscreen and manually typing it into a computer.
When you call debt management, they are having to look at 2 or 3 different databases if you are querying something from before 2022. They have databases that don't talk to each other, it's 4 different legacy systems cobbled together. Several times I'm dealing with VAT debts, and debt management can't help as "the debt is on a legacy system" and only a higher grade person can access those so I'll get them to call you back (they never call back).
HMRC's digital is no more digital than my cutting a square into a cardboard box and putting it on my head and saying "Hey everyone, look, I'm on the TV". I might look like I am on TV in glorious (and it would be glorious) HD, but I'm kidding myself, I'm a very analogue guy with a box on his head. Much like HMRC.
"Corroborating this, an HMRC spokesperson told AccountingWEB: “In the last tax year, we received more than three million phone calls on just three things that can easily be done digitally – resetting an online password, getting your tax code, and getting your National Insurance number. That’s almost 500 people working full-time to answer just those calls. They’d spend the equivalent of 95 years on those calls.”
You cannot reset the password online easily. If you know your ID but not your password then yes, can be done online. Almost all of my queries I deal with are taxpayers who don't know their ID or password, can only be done by calling HMRC and passing security tests.
I appreciate that calling for your tax code or NI are annoying calls but remember HMRC is there to provide a service, taxpayers are not an inconvenience. These things can be done online but requires the taxpayer to have an online account with HMRC.
Take my wife (someone, please), PAYE, only knows her NI number because she keeps her paperwork and still has that little blue/red credit card. She has no reason to interact with HMRC and has no government gateway. Not everyone keeps paperwork as carefully as my wife, so how else does a 21 year old or 50yr old find out their NI when starting a new job? Calling HMRC, enrolling for a gateway makes no sense.
The bigger elephant is that none of these online systems works as well for agents. If HMRC did things right, agents would be able to message or text HMRC within the gateway environment, but HMRC took that away and now we have to call, spend 15 minutes going through security checks when we are already the clients agent via digital handshake, so a perfectly simple way to deal with millions of agents quickly and digitally, instead we have to call, we have to get a letter of authority in writing, a 64-8 even though we're filing their VAT returns or CT returns, etc.
HMRC do not even like emails, on the occasion they do reply, you have to send a written statement confirming how insecure emails are before HMRC will respond to you. It is utterly ridiculous, no other agency or business interacts like this and its nothing to do with security, its hanging onto old processes for comfort.
I use online banking loads, HSBC and Starling bank apps, I can do everything in the app, any queries I can have a webchat with a person in a few minutes, issues sorted. That is the model HMRC should be aiming for, instead they've gone for tart up our old website, stick on a few online forms and then job done, "we've gone digital".
Email from HMRC today abut yesterdays announcement :-
"Yesterday we sent you an email about changes to our helplines. These changes are being halted while we consider how best to help taxpayers harness online services."
HMC so obsessed with online, so the helpline is only being saved for now until HMRC figure out how they help taxpayers harness online services better.
In other words, its the taxpayers fault, nothing like a bit of victim blaming hey.
I've made 3 calls to HMRC VAT helpline today. All three was because HMRC have messed up very basic tasks :
1. Disbanding a VAT group. Had submitted VAT registration and sent VAT 505/1 forms via online - I was harnessing HMRC's much desired online approach. Letter (not digital reply) from VAT group saying they don't know which entity I want to be the representative member of the VAT group. Had to call them to say I am disbanding the VAT group (as per what the VAT50/51 forms state), apologies for not reading the tick box correctly and will now process correctly but my call was to fix their problem.
2. VAT652 disclosure. Submitted VAT652 in October 2023, client owed £62k. Client paid £62k in October 2023 to reduce interest charges, HMRC processed the VAT652 in February 2024. But HMRC allocated the VAT652 twice, so client now owes £124k and only paid £62k. Again, HMRC will fix the issue and amend the VAT account but I had to call to fix their problem.
3. VAT registration. I have 2 VAT registrations submitted in December 2023, I have followed their online guidance and emailed a chase to the VAT registration team with the appropriate reference number...I did this in Jan, Feb and Mar and no replies at all. Why have an online process that says "email us if waiting more than 40 days" if they don't actually answer?
Point being, here I am, "harnessing" all of the digital/online services that HMRC are trumpeting but the issue isn't the online bit, it's the people behind the scenes who are manually processing everything that you submit online, it is HMRC taking months to do anything and ignoring you in between .
Disagree to a degree.
Agree that budgets have been slashed and a political desire to shift HMRC to an online only beast, requiring fewer staff, etc. Nothing wrong with this aspirational and future proofing objective.
Its the implementation that is the issue, you don't just cut thousands of (experienced) staff, then hastily replace them with school leavers with less experience and at same time, dribble out a few ill thought out online forms that still require human intervention once received by HMRC meaning any digital gain is lost with manual processing.
Get the IT right first, test it, have it cover 80% of taxpayer queries and then make the cuts, not the other way around. What we have now is HMRC staff who don't know what they are doing, not answering emails, not opening post, taking months to reply toi the simplest of queries and then HMRC wonder why their helplines are being flooded with calls...Get the basics right and you dont need to worry about plugging gaps elsewhere.
The professional bodies are a disgrace, not representing their members at all, just taking the fees and ticking the compliance boxes.
Not just with fighting HMRC, but also with the more spurious tax agents and their dodgy tax scams, the professional bodies seem happy not to intervene or to promote good agents over bad ones.
Hello my name is HMRC Elbow.
Hi, I'm HMRC Ar*e, I don't think we've met before.
Not buying this "we listened to feedback" nonsense.
HMRC published a document this morning stating how they carefully performed risk impact assessments to ensure they did not discriminate against the disabled and other minorities, HMRC must have been so proud that they had done all their due diligence before closing the helplines.
Turns out, they more likely made the decision on Monday to close the lines for no reason other than taxpayers can like it or lump it, do their usual of making the announcement a week before the new rules kick in giving nobody anytime to adjust or complain and then sit back and watch further chaos as the "new strategy" crumbles into dust on day 1.
Official announcement here
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hmrc-helpline-changes-halted
HMRC are not directly under the control of the govenrment/Chancellor, which is why HMRC usually reports performance to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and which is why nothing ever gets done as the PAC ask some questions, get fobbed off, don't drill down enough into the waffle responses from HMRC and rinse repeat.
What a slap in the face for Harra, finally his brainless rampage appears to be being stopped, for now.
I suspect all that will happen is that call wait times will get longer, replies to letters will take longer and Harra will blame Hunt for stopping his plans to "improve" service levels (ie, blame the government)
All "working" from home and attending diversity webinars :)
All "working" from home and attending diversity webinars :)