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I read an inciteful piece this week from my former colleague Sarah Saunders (tinyurl.com/55aucwpb) in which she detailed her experience of applying for a paper version of the 2022-23 self-assessment (SA) tax return. You need to read the piece in full to appreciate the endless loop that she found herself in, but it will probably come as no surprise that Sarah’s experience was not a positive one.
The closure of the SA helpline over the summer has been widely criticised, for example see the CIOT president Gary Ashford’s comments at tinyurl.com/yrzbepuv.
There is, I suppose, a sliver of an argument to say that HMRC is justified in diverting resources to other services (just a sliver, mind you), but what saddens me about Sarah’s experience is that nothing has been joined up. It doesn’t seem that all parts of the organisation had a coherent plan to deal with the consequences of the decision and that taxpayers are the ones left trying to sort it all out.
The chair of the parliamentary Treasury Committee has written to HMRC (tinyurl.com/2d7xcx6r) with some pertinent questions about the trial to close the helpline over the summer. Two particularly interest me. The first is how HMRC will monitor the success of the trial. The second is whether the closure is linked to HMRC’s homeworking policy. Homeworking has undoubtedly been a benefit to many employees, but there is a lot of scepticism about whether it really can work for HMRC.
It will be fascinating to see what the department says. The committee has requested a response by 27 June and I will return to this topic when that is published.
If you do one thing...
Read the draft guidance on the multinational top-up tax (tinyurl.com/hmrctopuptaxgui).
