Yesterday I wrote about the exodus of senior tax officials from HMRC, leaving the organisation short of senior people with experience and tax knowledge.
Quite rightly a loyal reader pointed out that the exodus is not just occurring in the rarefied upper echelons of HMRC, but also in other ranks as well:
"Rats and ship are the two words which spring to mind.It is clear that "form over substance" is the mantra being applied in HMRC, where knowledge and experience of tax is subordinated to management claptrap dogma and box ticking.
There are more and more leaving, everyone is fed up with pacesetter, stats which are nothing short of a figure fudging exercise, promotion for anyone who can talk bollocks at 'shiteboard meetings' and managers who can't answer a tax query.
I got my 8th new manager in a year today.
Another pacesetter practitioner!
There are not too many of us around who have a taxes background, the place is a shambles.
But we all know why, the government are making it so crap so they can sell it off bit by bit cheaply to their mates."
I am not yet convinced that the government plan is to privatise HMRC, I think that would be politically impossible. However, I am of the view that a catastrophic failure of RTI et al will give the government the impetus/excuse to untangle HMRC and probably reverse the merger that caused many of the problems in the first place.
I may of course be proven wrong by events.
As ever I welcome views, opinions and comments.
Tax does have to be taxing.
Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations
What is TAXWISE?
TAXWISE is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.
To find out more, please use this link Taxwise
Tax Investigation for Dummies, by Nick Morgan, provides a good and easy to read guide for anyone caught up in an HMRC tax investigation. A must read for any Self Assessment taxpayer.
Click the link to read about: Tax Investigation for Dummies
HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
As much as I think many of the staff in HMRC might love a reversal of the merger I suspect it would be impossible now. With the closure of a raft of offices/buildings the infastructure is not there to split.
ReplyDeleteMore likely, with the senior management leaving, it might *kneels & prays* give them a glimmer of hope to kill pacesetter in its current form (they are already murmering about renaming it) and kick Caseflow into the long grass (the worst, bar none, of all the bad systems the department has ever had).
When the senior-management leave they can then blame them for implementing them.... simples.
I could personally save approx 5 wasted hours a week by removing Caseflow and the disaster that is the penalties procedure. Multiply that by all other users and other moronic processes and you have the real reason why 'Service' is grinding to a halt.
The latest debacle with the debt collection agencies proves that this work can't be privatised. I'm not sure what a de-merger would achieve though - 'customs and excise' areas are still very identifiable and unique within HMRC. A re-created IR would still be subject to mass centralisation, efficiency savings, Pacesetter (which like it or not, actually does make staff work harder for fear of being challenged on an hourly basis), experienced caseworkers gradually replaced with more and more contact centre staff - saving a fortune as majority are newly recruited therefore bottom of a payscale which is unlikely to increase for another decade going off where majority of these centres are based. If you think any government will reverse this you're deluded.
ReplyDelete