Sunday 31 July 2011

Double standards don't have to be taxing...

This week we learned that OFGEM arbitarily fined British Gas £2.5 million for poor customer service. Now it turns out HMRC have been slapped down by MP's for the same crime.

MPs said they found bad management and demoralised staff, and that some levels of service were “­unacceptable”...

So what happens now? Do we all get a rebate? Do heads roll? Do our elected representatives simplify the tax code?

8 comments:

Roue le Jour said...

Just as utilities assumed every home had a housewife who was free to wait in for them decades after this ceased to be true, so the revenue still assumes an honest person works for a large company that does his tax for him.

They are opposed to any kind of freelance or self-employment when in today's world they should be making this as easy as possible.

DNase said...

Can I blame Gordon Brown again? The mind-bogglingly complicated state into which he encouraged UK tax policy, has not made HMRC's job easier.

Steven_L said...

RlJ: Come clean they, what have they put you through?

DN: Blaming Gordon is always a good place to start!

Brian, follower of Deornoth said...

No, no, no. In future they will send a very nice letter threatening prosecution for tax you don't owe.

Anonymous said...

What happens now is that for some things carry on much the same as ever - the estimable Mr Hartnett, along with the rest of the senior hierarchy at HMRC seems to be fire-proof, so if any heads do roll it will be somewhat down towards the lower end of the food chain, which is also where section heads will be encouraged to up the pressure on the minions to improve turn around times whilst at the same time 'embracing' new purpose designed IT systems designed to specs provided by HMRC bodies who have never occupied a "hot desk" and consequently no doubt screwed up the specs, and provided by a company which knew better than anyone in HMRC what was required and so delivered something which the no nothings in HMRC tasked with getting it signed off on and so is now at least 2 steps removed from usefulness so far as those at the sharp end are concerned, but they will of course be expected to use it and make it work, and if it doesn't it will be their fault. They have also to contend with being a supplier of data for DWP's new universal credit IT system, which throws up some interesting possibilities - for example as set out here : http://whitehallwatch.org/2011/06/19/universal-credit-faces-it-problems-its-official/

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Roue le Jour said...

Steven_L, no worse than anybody else ;)

Problem is, the revenue has a very cosy scheme where employers do the work for them and they are opposed to any change that means taxpayers do their own tax as it means extra work for them. It just seems ridiculous to me that the revenue can dictate how people work just to make life easier for them. Tail wagging the dog and all that.

Old BE said...

This HMRC thing is great timing because I have been having a ridiculous job getting HMRC to tell my employer my tax code so that I can pay the correct amount of tax. Each time I ask them to send the letter out (again) they send me a new tax code. Weird.

Anonymous said...

Please please don't give them ideas. the last thing we need is another "watchdog" called OFFTAX or something (with a Chief Executive earning £100k and 25 staff of course)!