.png)
.png)
STUART JONES is not impressed by the joint statement about HMRC's service delivery
KEY POINTS
- Practitioners should not ignore the joint statement on HMRC’s service delivery.
- Will the department’s performance indicators really solve practitioners’ problems?
- Have there been many ‘coal face’ improvements in the past 15 years?
- Departmental standards have fallen with declining staff numbers and conditions.
- Tax practitioners and accountants simply want HMRC’s commitment to improvement.
The joint statement about service delivery issued by HMRC, the tax professional bodies and tax charities on 14 September cannot be ignored by practitioners, if only because over the past few weeks both HMRC, in the form of Dave Hartnett, and practitioners, in the form of Paul Aplin, the chairman of the ICAEW Tax Faculty technical committee, have been allowed to express their views in Taxation.
Both individuals are familiar with politics, Dave Hartnett because of his job and Paul Aplin from his dealings with government through the Tax Faculty.
Unfortunately, and probably because of this, their words do not ring a bell with most accountants and tax practitioners. Describing the joint statement as ‘a potentially momentous development’ (as Dave Hartnett did in his recent guest editorial ) does not make it one.
In the same way, Paul Aplin (Seizing the moment) telling us ‘we are at a turning point and that if we fail to grasp the opportunity we will face a very long wait for another’ will not make practitioners accept yet another initiative from HMRC.
Little progress
Brian Palmer, quoted by Paul in his article, may well not ‘remember a better opportunity than this current situation presents for all those involved with Working Together to make a difference at an operational level to the UK tax system’, but his enthusiasm is tempered slightly by telling us that he has been ‘working together’ for over a decade, during which time I have seen little or no improvement in my day-to-day workings with HMRC.
I am not alone in this; you only have to read Taxation or the Tax Faculty forum to see how widespread this dissatisfaction is.
Developing a series of performance indicators, setting minimum service standards and encouraging HMRC staff to spend time in tax practices (and if we are honest this is all this new initiative is about) reminds me of the oft-quoted saying ‘rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic’.
It will not solve the problems facing practitioners, but it will probably allow both sides to prove they have changed things. Statements made by Paul such as ‘needing to look forward and not back’ and ‘if we do nothing then nothing will happen’ will not reduce the frustrations facing practitioners in their daily dealings with HMRC.
To paraphrase Paul’s statement, ‘things will not change until things change’, for more than a decade I have seen the professional bodies ever keener to get into bed with HMRC and I have been told by the Tax Faculty on more than one occasion that ‘working with them will achieve more than fighting them’.
Why? Nothing has improved at the ‘coal face’ (another of Mr Aplin’s expressions) in the past 15 years. Ask any practitioner.
The reality
Service standards do not reveal the real problems facing practices. I should add at this stage I do not blame the HMRC staff, who I know are equally frustrated by the situation forced on them from above.
Their working conditions and numbers have declined over the same period as standards have fallen. Service standards are there to be manipulated by vested interests. Perhaps the saying should be changed to ‘There are lies, damned lies and service standards’.
Paul Aplin is quite right when he says that those at the coal face have no axe to grind. Practitioners want to run their practices efficiently, just as politicians crave for efficiency in HMRC.
However, reducing staff numbers will not increase productivity because the information technology (IT) solutions will not pick up the slack. I imagine everyone is of the same mind when it comes to the effectiveness of large public sector IT schemes.
Until HMRC are forced to answer the problems facing the profession specifically, not generally, there will be no improvement for practitioners.
For a start, I want to know why I am not allowed to speak to the person dealing with my client’s tax affairs, and why my client’s tax affairs are now dealt with at the opposite end of the country instead of locally. It certainly does not make me more efficient. Please, Mr Hartnett, show me why it is better for HMRC.
No impact
As a taxpayer I applaud Dave Hartnett’s successes in collecting billions of pounds of unpaid tax through the ‘groundbreaking agreement with Switzerland’, the development of the Liechtenstein disclosure facility and the introduction of the Connect risk engine to identify dishonest taxpayers.
None of them, however, will make a scrap of difference to the problems I face every day in my dealings with HMRC. In my opinion, it is little more than spin.
Practitioners want straight answers to straight questions. No beating about the bush, no charm initiatives, just a commitment to improve things. Interestingly this is exactly how Dave Hartnett concludes his article. Unfortunately, despite this latest initiative, we are still poles apart.
