HMRC Joins The Masons

HMRC are recruiting for two positions; a part time non-executive chairman and a Chief Executive Officer.

HMRC, in the face of plummeting morale, claim that they are changing their complex and incomprehensible management structure to try to bring in some elements of corporate governance and efficiency from the real world.

HMRC scanned the "talent" pool within its organisation and found that it is sadly deficient; therefore the posts were to be advertised in the real world.

Isn't it rather odd then that these two posts are not advertised on the HMRC website?

In fact they have never been advertised on the HMRC site.

Indeed, you have to look very hard to find any evidence anywhere that HMRC are proactively seeking to fill these roles at all.

Simon Sweetman of AccountingWeb states that there has in fact been only one advert placed for the Chairman's role, in the Sunday Times on the 2nd of March.

"The highest level of leadership, chairing and influencing skills are required, combined with extensive experience of senior executive or non-executive leadership in large complex organisations. The Chair will have a proven track record of managing multiple stakeholders and, preferably, of working with Government."

Simon then notes that the salary is around £150K, for this part time post, but that the advert gives no closing date.

Has HMRC become part of the Masons, whereby only those invited to the very top positions are allowed to join?

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"

Guardian Says Sorry

The Guardian has apologised to Tesco over its reporting of Tesco's tax affairs.

As noted on this site in April, the Guardian wrote an article about Tesco's alleged tax avoidance plans.

Seemingly the Guardian was talking bollocks, and has now stated that it no longer believes that Tesco's Cayman island structures allowed it to avoid up to £1BN in corporation tax.

"The original Guardian articles did not correctly explain the effect of Tesco's tax schemes. It was wrong to state that they were designed to avoid corporation tax. It would have been correct to refer to avoiding SDLT [Stamp Duty Land Tax].

As a result, the figure of 'up to £1bn' - calculated as the amount which could have been saved on the disposal of £5bn of property - is wrong. The loss to the exchequer is likely to be nearer the region of £90m-£100m."

All very well, but even if there had been a tax avoidance plan that could have saved £1BN, the Guardian has been duped by Hartnett and Brown into their web of deception that tax avoidance is somehow wrong.

So what if Tesco had in fact put together a tax avoidance plan for saving £1BN?

Tax avoidance is perfectly legal, we all do it each year by eg claiming our personal allowances.

Hartnett and Brown are keen to tar tax avoidance with the same brush as tax evasion (which is illegal) because they desperately need to increase the tax take, as the government's finances are blown.

Once they have cracked down on high profile schemes, they will turn their attention to the more "mundane" ones such as isa's and possibly even personal allowances.

The Guardian was duped into playing the government's and HMRC's game, yet they still don't see this. Their apology snidely refers to "clever accountants", thus leading the reader to conclude that tax avoidance is somewhat "dodgy".

However, being the Guardian, it chooses to cite their "righteous moralism" over "correctly reporting the facts" as being justification for the error.

"We remain ready to defend our journalism - in court, if necessary. We believe these matters should be subject to debate and scrutiny, and we invite further informed analysis from any readers with experience in accountancy or tax law."

They want input, I suggest that you give them some; here is their email tax@guardian.co.uk

Tax avoidance is legal!

The most effective way for the government to reduce the time, effort and money spent by HMRC on chasing tax avoiders is to simplify the tax system; thus making it unnecessary for companies and individuals to set up complex and costly tax avoidance structures.

Unfortunately, Brown and Darling don't do "simplification".

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"

Infamy, Infamy, They've All Got It In For Me! II

In March of this year, Dave Hartnett the "nearly man" of HMRC and acting Chairman spoke at an ICAEW Tax Faculty event and addressed the highly embarrassing subject (embarrassing to HMRC anyway) of the online tax filing system crash at the end of January which forced HMRC to extend its filing deadline by a day.

In Hartnett's view this was not an accident, most certainly it was not the fault of HMRC or its IT system.

The real cause?

Deliberate Conspiracy!

Seemingly, according to Hartnett, there had been a mysterious "spike" at 11.10pm on the night of Wednesday 30 January when a number of users (a mere 6,500 users) had all come on to the system for a few seconds, but none actually filed.

Hartnett would not comment further on the issue, except to say that he would share details with the tax world when more was known.

I did note at the time that it was unlikely that even had this been a deliberate denial of service attack (DOS), 6,500 would not have caused a professional, well run IT system to crash.



However, it now transpires that the "nearly man" was talking...errmmm...using my favourite accounting phrase here...

Bollocks!

HMRC now report that is has "categorically established" that there was no attempt to hack into its online filing system on the evening that its computers crashed.

A Revenue spokeswoman said:

"We have now undertaken a thorough investigation into the problems that occurred and have categorically established there was no hacking attempt on the online filing system.

Our investigations show that customers were carrying out a number of activities in relation to their tax returns.

The number filing in the peak period is consistent with filing patterns for earlier years."

Therefore there are two questions that remain unresolved (unresolved publicly at least):

1 Why did the "nearly man" claim that the system had been subject to a DOS attack? Is it possible that the leadership of HMRC don't understand how IT systems operate?

2 Why did the system crash?

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"

You're Not Hired

Sorry folks, this post has been removed because it was complete nonsense.

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"

A Tangled Web

Our beloved government really should try to stop lying to us.

Doesn't it know that the truth eventually comes out?

In November 2007, Alistair Darling blamed the loss of the two HMRC CDs (Datagate) on a junior official.

However, this spin appears to be a load of (to use a technical accounting term here) bollocks.

Treasury financial secretary Jane Kennedy in a written answer on Wednesday gave a different version of the "government line".

According to Kennedy, data controllers within HMRC "sit within business units' line-management chain"; the director of each business unit in HMRC is ultimately accountable for the data-security arrangements in that unit; and the chair of HMRC has ultimate responsibility for data security.

When will they apologise to the hapless HMRC junior on whom they laid the blame?

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"

The Joy of Discipline

It seems that some people in HMRC are a little slow on the uptake, when it comes to data security issues.

You would have thought that following last year's datagate scandal, when HMRC lost the personal records of 25 million taxpayers, that things would have "sharpened" up a bit in HMRCland.

Indeed, HMRC have been playing the line that this was a one off cock up.

Seemingly not!

It appears that misuse of personal data is part of the culture of HMRC.

Over 600 staff at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have been disciplined for accessing personal or sensitive data.

Treasury Financial Secretary Jane Kennedy said that there were 238 people disciplined in 2005, 180 in 2006, and 192 in 2007. In many cases the penalty for staff misusing data was dismissal.

Ms Kennedy is operating under the illusion that this unwarranted intrusion and misuse of people's private data is OK. She believes that the figures showed "the strength of HMRC's disciplinary procedures".

Ms Kennedy said HMRC has a "strict policy forbidding staff to access customer records unless they have a legitimate business need.

Breaches of this policy are taken seriously and any breach will result in the commencement of disciplinary proceedings.

Each case is treated on its merits but in many cases the disciplinary penalty for breach in dismissal."

Fine!

Therefore please answer this question, given that the penalties are so severe and the rule is well known, why are HMRC staff (albeit it a minority) still misusing the data?

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"