This week's opinion: 12 December 2024

Imagine your firm being given authority to recruit 5 000 extra staff. That’s what happening in HMRC. OK it is already a large organisation but even so 5 000 is a sizable number for an organisation which currently has about 65 000 employees.

I imagine that the reaction to the news at senior levels was first ‘thank goodness’ and second ‘how on earth are we going to cope with all of those new people?’. While we understand that there will be a small number of experienced tax professionals in that cohort the majority will have no tax experience and will need to be trained. Clearly it is not reasonable to expect that these 5 000 will undergo the full rigours of training which many readers will have gone through in the professional exams or (like me) inspector training in the Inland Revenue but we hope that...