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Author: Great Britain. National Audit Office Publisher: The Stationery Office ISBN: 9780102954241 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 40
Book Description
Eighteen months into an ambitious programme to transform HMRC, the Department has spent £851 million and achieved estimated benefits of £2.4 billion. These benefits are mainly from activities already underway when the programme began. Changes to funding have led the Department to revise and postpone parts of the programme, and the overall benefits expected carry high levels of uncertainty.A report out today by the National Audit Office found that most of the £11.5 billion benefits are expected to come from an increased tax yield (£6.3 billion) and transaction savings to business and government (£4.1 billion). The estimate of additional tax yield is volatile and assumes collection in full. The Department has made progress in developing its systems and processes and enhanced its project and financial management skills to deliver the programme. For most programmes it has developed governance processes and set out responsibilities for managing the projects. It delivered, as planned, one major programme in the first 18 months and has implemented parts of other programmes. It is taking action to improve implementation plans and milestones, risk management and contingency plans for some other programmes. A major driver of the programme is the Department's targets to achieve efficiency savings of 5 per cent a year. Changes in funding and content of the programme during 2007-08 delayed the completion of the business cases for individual programmes. The Department has approved business cases for 10 programmes and plans to complete the remaining three over Summer 2008. Finalising the component parts of the transformation programme is a critical step, particularly as the Department expects the funding available to peak in 2008-09 and reduce thereafter.Changing the culture of the Department to become more customer-focused is an important part of the programme. In any change programme staff satisfaction might be expected to decline and recent surveys indicate morale remains at a low ebb. The Department needs to more actively demonstrate the benefits to its staff and manage the expectations of customers as many of the improvements for them are scheduled for 2011 and beyond.
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Treasury Committee Publisher: The Stationery Office ISBN: 9780215020239 Category : Customs administration Languages : en Pages : 104
Book Description
The Government has announced its intention to merge the Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise departments into a single department, to be called HM Revenue and Customs, in line with the recommendations of the O'Donnell report ('Financing Britain's future: review of the Revenue departments, Cm 6163; ISBN 0101616325) published in March 2004. The Committee's report examines the case for merger; expected costs and benefits; risks; legislation: confidentiality and powers of the new department; tax policy-making; and ministerial accountability. The Committee supports the decision in principle and looks forward to a detailed analysis of expected costs and benefits being carried out as soon as practicable, and also supports the introduction of new accountability arrangements. However, the fact that the Executive Chairman will report to three Treasury Ministers on various aspects of the new department's work appears unnecessarily cumbersome, and recommends that this should be reviewed in light of practice once the new department has been created.
Author: Great Britain. National Audit Office Publisher: The Stationery Office ISBN: 9780102954272 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 52
Book Description
HM Revenue & Customs clears most imported goods quickly, and processes for submitting customs declarations and payments for non-EU imports are straightforward. The rate of physical checks at the UK border is below the EU average, however, and the number of audits of traders has dropped substantially since 2005-06. Ninety-nine per cent of declarations are processed electronically and 90 per cent of goods are cleared immediately. The Department checks documents for about 6 per cent of imports each year and aims to clear 95 per cent of these within two hours. However, a recent quality review by the Department found an 18 per cent error rate in these checks. The Department has only recently standardised the reporting of physical checks, and these reports suggest that between 2 and 3 per cent of imports get checked (The EU average is 9 per cent). The Department needs to improve its reporting, develop a standard for the minimum level of checking and undertake testing to understand compliance levels. Audits of traders fell by half for large businesses and two-fifths for small and medium businesses between 2005-06 and 2007-08. The additional revenue from this compliance work is reducing while the level of errors detected is rising, particularly among new traders. For small and medium sized businesses, the level of errors detected has increased from 32 to 39 per cent. The fragmented management of customs activities within the Department, a lack of clear accountability, and incomplete management information have hindered effective oversight of its performance and risk management.
Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office Publisher: The Stationery Office ISBN: 0102946744 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 52
Book Description
This NAO report, examines the Department of HM Revenue and Customs accuracy in processing Self Assessment Tax forms and the PAYE scheme for Income Tax. In the 2006-07, the Department collected £149 billion in Income Tax, dealing with the tax affairs of some 36 million taxpayers. In total, £125 billion was collected via employers through the PAYE scheme and £24 billion from self employed people, and others with additional income through the Tax Self Assessment. The Department needs to spend about £1.7 billion per year in administering Income Tax, with the processing taking place across the Department's 300 offices. This report draws some of the following conclusions: that the correct tax assessment occurs in 95.4% of cases; there is a 96.5% accuracy in processing Self Assessment, whilst PAYE cases were 95.1% accurate (but 25% of PAYE cases are more complex, with more processing needed, and so a greater error rate, at 82.1%, is found in these instances). The Department itself estimates inaccurate processing has led to 3.6 million errors in Self Assessment and 2.8 million errors on PAYE in 2006-07. Taking all the various processing errors together, just over 1 million taxpayers in this period had received £125 million in underpayments of tax and £157 million in overpayments. The most frequent type of error is in the Department's calculation of tax codes, which are used by employers to calculate deductions of income tax from employees' pay, with 63% of the PAYE error rate relating to tax codes. Among the report's recommendations are: that HM Customs & Revenue should continue with the quality monitoring, identifying specific types of error; they should facilitate the sharing of good practice across the tax offices; further develop an early warning system, through the analysis of trends in monthly data; separate out more complex cases to process by specialised teams and develop a customer-focused approach by tracking the effect of error rates on the different taxpayer groups.
Author: Great Britain. National Audit Office Publisher: The Stationery Office ISBN: 9780102954395 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 40
Book Description
Although most tax payments are made on time, around one-third are not. The level of debt in HM Revenue and Customs fluctuates on a daily basis. The difference is mainly because these systems exclude some debt that is due but is paid almost immediately and there are timing differences in when debt is downloaded from the main tax systems. This report analyses trends in debt levels using figures from the debt management systems. It examines: The Department's performance in managing debt; how the Department manages and prioritises debts; the Department's methods for collecting debt and how it encourages taxpayers to pay on time. It finds that though the Department has improved its management of tax debt, over the last year debt as a proportion of net receipts and the age of debt has increased on some taxes.
Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office Publisher: The Stationery Office ISBN: 9780102976991 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 40
Book Description
HM Revenue and Customs will have to make sure its staff have the right skills if it is to succeed in cutting its running costs by 25 per cent by 2014-2015 and bringing in each year an extra £7 billion of tax revenue. It is estimated that HMRC spent £96 million in 2010-11 developing the skills of its staff but judges that spending is not systematically directed on top level business priorities. Staff skills will have been a factor in the improvement of HMRC's business results including the extra £1billion tax generated since 2010 by enforcement and compliance activity. But currently there is not a direct evidential link between results and training and development activities. Only 54 per cent of HMRC staff said that they were able to access the right learning and development opportunities when they needed to and only 38 per cent said that training had improved their performance. Evidence from a customer survey and external stakeholders also suggests that the Department does not have all the skills it needs, but HMRC does not have a good overview of its current skills gaps. It needs better data and information on gaps which would help it take a more strategic approach and gain an early warning of future skills gaps, such as the risk of skills depleting as experienced staff retire. This is of particular concern in HMRC as one in five staff in key business areas are over 55. HMRC also lacks governance arrangements or structures to hold the organization to account for money spent on training. Many of the points in this report were raised previously by HMRC's own reviews but the Department has not made the changes needed.
Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office Publisher: The Stationery Office ISBN: 9780102965483 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 40
Book Description
Good tax agents, third parties paid by taxpayers to act on their behalf in their dealings with HM Revenue & Customs, help their clients get their tax right. But, self-assessed income tax returns filed by customers represented by agents are more likely to have under-declarations of tax (resulting from error, failure to take reasonable care or evasion) than returns filed by non-represented taxpayers. A key reason may be that the tax affairs agents deal with are more complex. However, analysis indicates that paying for professional help is not without risk for a taxpayer and that there might be an opportunity for HMRC to increase tax revenues by providing better support to tax agents and by better targeting of poorer ones. A three per cent reduction in the average amount of tax under-declared by represented taxpayers could lead to over £100 million extra revenue each year. At present, lack of data on individual tax agents prevents the Department's taking a tailored approach to its dealings with agents and providing feedback on performance. With better use of data, HMRC could make more targeted interventions based on risk and achieve greater value for money. HMRC has recognised the importance of developing its relationship with tax agents and has taken steps to work more effectively with this group. Initiatives have included the introduction of a priority telephone line for agents' queries on self-assessed income tax and PAYE. The Department has also encouraged tax agents to file tax returns online.
Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office Publisher: The Stationery Office ISBN: 9780102980561 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 44
Book Description
This report recognizes that HMRC has restored customer service levels from a low point in 2010, when problems with the new National Insurance and PAYE system increased the number of queries. HMRC has now dealt with long-term backlogs by employing 2,500 temporary staff, enhancing phone technology and improving productivity. In 2011-12, HMRC answered 74 per cent of phone calls, against an interim target of 58 per cent. This level of service is nevertheless low. So far in 2012-13, HMRC has improved its handling of post but its performance in handling calls has been varied. Depending on the tariff they pay their phone company, customers are charged from when their call is connected even if they are held in a queue. The NAO estimates that it cost customers £33 million in call charges while they are in the queue. Most of HMRC's numbers are still 0845 numbers which result in high call charges for some customers. It is, however, investigating alternatives. NAO analysis indicates that, by the end of 2012-13 and through 2013-14, HMRC could achieve its target of answering 90 per cent of calls. However, by 2014-15, HMRC will have reduced numbers of contact centre staff so will need to redeploy large numbers of back-office processing staff to answer telephones. There is also uncertainty about the impact on call volumes of large-scale changes, such as the introduction of Real Time Information and the transition to universal credit.