Self assessment returns hit by processing delays
Accountants are still waiting for self assessment returns from the 2020–21 tax year to be processed, with advisers reporting of estimated wait times of 12 weeks.
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Harra admitted in the executive summary that customer service levels were not “where we would wish them to be”
Ermm, non-existant is likely never to be where they wish them to be.
The beauty of Jim's carefully worded verbiage is indeed that it means nothing.
He may well have been thinking 'I wish the customers would stop calling us, so that our service levels - maybe just one call per week - showed a reasonable proportion being answered'!
I quote Tommy Shelby , Those that make the rules have no rules! , party on guys whilst still workin from home
I still want to know where this 80% comes from - nobody, and I mean nobody, I speak to thinks HMRC is competent most think it is an utter shambles yet this creature at the helm keeps telling the world that 80% of people are satisfied. Does he only speak to people who have just received a repayment?
Or perhaps it is data sponged of one of their customer testing kits. The questions asked beg for a yes answer and they don't ask questions that would anticipate a negative response. Dishonest I call it Mr Harra. Your organisation is not fit for purpose. Everyone else has had to cope with Covid but if what we read is to be believed HMRC were the last to return to work and some still haven't. How on earth can you conduct a tax collection organisation with people sitting at home with their laptops. All sorts of issues there data security being at the top and HMRC haven't the best record there anyway. Think of all the letters you get about clients who aren't and never have been clients and it goes on from there.
Perhaps when we get a new PM (Heaven help us there) and thus a new Chancellor we might all write to him and ask that a serious external review be made of HMRC so that someone with sense and ability can be appointed to sort it out - Jim can get his knighthood as a payoff, as they do, but we just might get some sense back into the system.
SA has been in place for 25 years. Today most SA Returns are submitted digitally. 25 years ago most SA Returns were submitted on paper. Yet the processing backlog today is bigger than it has ever been. I've still got Returns filed 9 months ago that are not processed, despite numerous calls to the ADL. If HMRC are still unable to cope with this long-established system which only requires 1x Tax Return a year, how will HMRC cope with MTD ITSA which requires sometimes over a dozen Tax Returns a year? But one fundamental question: why is there a backlog at all? Surely HMRC practice the end-to-end digital-by-default that it preaches? Surely when I submit a digital Tax Return it goes through HMRC's computer system digitally without any manual intervention. These delays highlight the amount of manual processes HMRC still has which proves HMRC does not practice what it preaches.