"The tax credit system is complicated, and HMRC will have to overcome significant challenges if it is going to achieve value for money.
HMRC deserves credit for demonstrating innovation, but it has further to go to achieve sustainable reductions in tax credits error and fraud. To tackle error and fraud effectively, there needs to be an improved understanding of risks and better use of information." Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, 14 February 2013.
HMRC has significantly overestimated the impact of its interventions on the level of error and fraud:
"In 2009, HMRC announced a target to reduce error and fraud to 5 per cent by 2010-11, down from 9 per cent. HMRC missed this target. Error and fraud losses for 2010-11 were just over 8 per cent, amounting to almost £2.3 billion, around £850 million higher than if HMRC had achieved the target.In other words:
Today's report concludes that, while HMRC has made improvements to its approach and increased the amount of error and fraud it prevents, HMRC is not yet achieving value for money.
HMRC believed it was on track to meets its target, but had overestimated the impact of its activities to tackle error and fraud. It estimated that it had prevented £1.4 billion of error and fraud in 2010-11, but has revised this to under £500 million.
HMRC has not yet developed an effective response to stop error and fraud recurring after it has corrected a claim."
Get a Grip!
Tax does have to be taxing.
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And these are the figures they told the NAO about?
ReplyDeleteMakes you wonder what the true figures are and what the "stimulus" for the change from estimate to "reality" was.
Might the NAO have for once looked where HMRC didn't want it to look?
What do you expect with an employee engagement at a paltry 41%?
ReplyDeleteSomeone, somewhere, needs to focus on what is wrong in there. All that money, uncollected, unprotected etc is not too good for the cash flow of UK PLC in these financially deprived times.
It must be obvious that pacesetter/lean is incapable of producing in HMRC.
As an add-on, WTF are the management of HMRC doing for their £'s?!
Just another case of "dead sheep savegery".
ReplyDeleteI don't think its a case of sheep, with tax credits, HMRC are flogging a dead horse. This overcomplicated approach, engineered by Gordon Brown was fundamentally flawed when it was designed.
ReplyDeleteIt would have been cheaper, less complex and less costly to administer if we'd shifted to taxation by household (as most of the rest of Europe does it) and then adjusted tax rates accordingly.
This concept of taking taxes off people and then giving it back to them in tax credits was always an idiotic waste.
I thought it was only the supermarkets that were flogging dead horses?
ReplyDeleteAt least thaat's what the Politico's and their media are telling us.
HMRC GETS A GRIP!
ReplyDeleteSunday morning, much repeated BBC news article featuring Home Secretary shows footage of border visit with PM Cameron & Home Secretary Teresa May being escorted around an airport by an over badged security guard, anyone notice the diminuitive figure scurrying in their wake? DOH! HMRC must have dumped her back on UKBA over the weekend eh?
Yes, I know its BBC library footage, but it makes for a good laugh!LOL
Just seen the clip on BBC 7pm news, yes 'tis she indeed, well spotted.
DeleteHad to have a closer look at BBC News after reading these posts, saw the 22:00 slot.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I saw Homer has been frozen out with May, Cameron and some prat that looked like a cruise director walking and talking in line abreast and Homer walking behind talking to Camerons rear end and nobody paying any attention to her.
Wonder if this was just before she was removed from UKBA?