HMRC launches upgraded Agent Forum
The Revenue has updated the way registered tax agents can flag issues to it and each other, but does it solve some of the problems that dogged its previous incarnation? Helen Thornley investigates.
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An apparent continuing weakness of the Forum is that HMRC seem willing only to pursue issues they deem to be widespread. All too often I come across obvious glitches in HMRC systems but invariably in only one or two client cases: being a small practice I will never be able to provide the dozens or even hundreds of examples they seem to require! Nevertheless in my opinion it sometimes only takes one example of the HMRC computer saying eg 2+2=5 to demonstrate a system error (and yes I have recently seen the equivalent of 2+2=5 on an HMRC computer generated SA tax calculation that simply did not correctly add up two figures to the total shown!).
The Forum HMRC 'Issues Resolution Manager' (an impressive sounding title worthy of George Orwell's 'newspeak') generally asks for more evidence of an issue, from other firms, before deciding if it is widespread. Given the very poor numbers of firms actively engaged on the Forum this never happens in sufficient numbers to satisfy HMRC so many issues do not get taken further. Also it can be many weeks (even months) for HMRC to respond fully to issues raised - the usual response is that they have sent the query on to the relevant HMRC department who then seem to take forever to get back with a substantive reply, if at all.
On the old Forum the HMRC Issues Resolution Manager had the sole power to close down a thread and claim it to be resolved (thereby adding to the impressive statistics demonstrating the 'success' of the Forum) despite in many cases agents not feeling that a matter has been dealt with adequately. It remains to be seen if this is still the case with the new Forum.
The old Forum gave some indication of the numbers of its users (which included the numbers for the separate general public forum, which rendered it misleadingly high anyway). This info seems to have gone - perhaps because it was such an embarrassingly low proportion of the total number of firms in the UK registered as agents with HMRC. If only a tiny minority of firms actively engage with HMRC on the Forum it seems as if HMRC take that as evidence of the apparently euphoric state of satisfaction from the 90% who do not engage.
Great work by HMRC. The updated version of the Agent Forum which is hosted on a different platform has some great features and better search facility. Anthony Constantinou appreciate your effort.
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