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Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Fresh figures sneaked out by the ever-transparent HM Revenue & Customs show that office attendance across their sprawling empire has collapsed to the lowest level in twelve months. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, while you’re being dragged back to your workplaces like Victorian chimney sweeps, HMRC’s finest are apparently treating the concept of “presenteeism” with the contempt it richly deserves.
According to the latest internal data, average attendance across their 170+ sites has dipped to a magnificent 28%. That’s lower than the chance of getting a sensible answer when you ring the VAT helpline on a wet Tuesday afternoon.
Some regional offices are reportedly running at 12% on a good day. At that rate they might as well turn the buildings into storage units for all those unused self-assessment forms, P45s, and the complete box-set of every HMRC IT disaster since 2004.
Naturally, the mandarins at 100 Parliament Street are spinning this faster than a politician caught with both hands in the expenses tin. “Flexible working”, they coo. “Empowering our people”, they trill. Translation: “Please don’t notice the empty offices we’re still paying business rates on while we threaten private-sector workers with the sack if they don’t return.”
Let’s remind ourselves who these work-from-home warriors actually are:
- The same people who fine YOU £100 for being three days late with a tax return
- The same people who still haven’t fixed the Child Benefit shambles eighteen months later
- The same people whose idea of customer service is a phone system that plays Vivaldi for 45 minutes before cutting you off
Yet they can’t manage to drag themselves to a desk more than once a fortnight.
Brilliant.
If you’re one of the unlucky sods who actually has to go into an
office, console yourself with a proper ergonomic chair (unlike the
£19.99 plastic torture devices HMRC buys in bulk):
→ Best office chair for people who actually show up to work
Or maybe invest in a decent webcam so you can attend all those
pointless Teams meetings from the comfort of your own bed – clearly the
HMRC-approved way:
→ Webcam good enough for civil servants who never leave the house
And if the stress of dealing with HMRC ever gets too much, treat
yourself to the finest single malt known to man – because you’ve bloody
earned it:
→ Whisky to drink while crying over your latest HMRC penalty notice
Meanwhile, the handful of dutiful souls who DO turn up find the office milk has evolved into a new life form and the meeting rooms smell like a wet Labrador.
Truly the heroes we don’t deserve.
So there we have it: HMRC – the department that demands you account for every last penny – can’t even account for 72% of its own staff on any given day.
If this were a private company the shareholders would be reaching for the pitchforks. But this is the public sector, where failure is always rewarded with a bigger budget and a glowing write-up in The Guardian.
Pass the biscuits. And the whisky. It’s going to be a very long decade.
Tax does have to be taxing.
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"
