As is evident from the many comments made on this site, many people do not enjoy working for HMRC and despair about their future.
However, all is not doom and gloom, I came across this story today that shows there is life after HMRC, if you are sufficiently high up the greasy pole.
Gabriel Makhlouf was director of dispute resolution at HMRC until 2010, look how far he has gone now!
Seemples!
I reproduce the article in full from The National Business Review:
"The Treasury’s deputy chief executive and acting secretary, Gabriel Makhlouf, has been appointed chief executive and secretary, the State Services Commission said today.
Mr Makhlouf, who has been acting in the role since June 1 following the departure of former Secretary John Whitehead, arrived in New Zealand from the United Kingdom in March 2010 to join the Treasury.
He almost immediately caused controversy with a call for Treasury to drop all screening of foreign investment.
Commenting after NBR’s story on Mr Makhlouf’s position, readers were split.
For some, dropping all screening opened the country to the likes of May Wang (the once-bankrupt Crafar Farms bidder blocked by the Overseas Investment Office).
For others, it was more a case of quid pro quo.
“Of course Gabriel Makhlouf is right,” read another comment. “Anyone who disagrees with him will also be insisting any company in NZ which own assets overseas must sell them, or leave NZ.”
Mr Makhlouf is also a member of a special advisory group of state services leaders formed as part of Finance Minister Bill English's bid to slash $1 billion from state sector spending.
Prior to joining Treasury, Mr Makhlouf was the director, dispute resolution at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in the UK - although perhaps his most notable role was that of private secretary to Gordon Brown during his time as UK Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He joined HMRC in 2005 as the director, debt management and banking and in 2008 he was appointed as the director, banking services, HMRC.
Other senior management roles held by Mr Makhlouf in the United Kingdom Civil Service included director, international in Inland Revenue UK from 1998 to 2003 and director, Capital and Savings from 2003 to 2005.
From 2000 to 2004 he was chairman of the committee on fiscal affairs at the OECD.
Mr Makhlouf has been appointed for a five year term and will take up the position on 28 June 2011."
Tax does have to be taxing.
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Bet he is at Bilderberg soon, if he has not already been there?
ReplyDeleteThe article says it all, no need for a conspiracy theory when its all based on fact.
For any cynics left out there follow the HMRC link attached, its an open source report posted by HMRC.
ReplyDeleteIt is self explanatory. That's before you read between the lines.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/international/gabs.htm
;)
And believe it or not, a genuinely nice guy, who connected well with lowly underlings like me.
ReplyDeleteConspiracy theorists have him given a fantastic job, on the other side of the world, to clear the way for wholesale outsourcing of HMRC debt collection, to which he was bitterly opposed......
Outsourcing debt collection will be a disaster on many fronts:
ReplyDelete- cost
- security
- efficiency
- reputation
- accuracy etc etc
Ken,
ReplyDeleteHMRC cannot get it right in-house, the chances of "mistakes" whatever the reason increase in direct proportion to the number of links in the data stream.
So, by doubling the links, HMRC are doubling the risk?
And who do you turn to if you believe you are right and they are wrong?
The next step is to privatise the revenue raising aspect of the large and complex tax areas i.e. the companies still paying tax in the UK, no wonder so many "specilist" concerns are interested in this bit - WONGA!
And all the time the IT gets worse, someone should be looking at what HMRC are actually getting and then having to pay extra for the bits required to make it all work!
And as for being green, LOL, the amount of paper being consumed is huge, why, when it's 2011 and they have all this expensive IT do they still need the volumes of paper associated resource, including new printers and shredders, because they still print everything and then shred it afterwards, despite everything being recorded or compiled on IT!?
@2 July 2011 12:16
ReplyDeleteHMRC are responsible for death of teenager by association http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2010193/Teachers-strike-Sophie-Howard-13-killed-falling-branch-school-closed.html
@19.22
ReplyDeleteNice. Classy.
2/7 @ 19:22
ReplyDeleteFollowing that line of thought anyone with Berg in their name is resposible for the sinking of the Titanic!
@2 July 2011 19:22
ReplyDeleteWhere does that leave the locals who voted for the council then?
Barking up the wrong tree with a canopy of lies, should have twigged it earlier, leaf it out 19:22
ReplyDeleteTo all commenters after @19:22 it's about on par with the level of debate in this forum over the past few months.
ReplyDeleteTo all commenters after @19:22 it's about on par with the level of debate in this forum over the past few months.
ReplyDeleteIf you didn't keep putting such complete horsewank in your posts we could concentrate on the more important aspects of HMRCISSHITE.
ReplyDelete