PlayTaking on the taxman
Jonathan Maitland investigates the mistakes by HM Revenue and Customs that have left people at their wit's end.
Jonathan meets Edward Fowler, a former Aberdeen businessman who was wrongly made bankrupt wrongly by HMRC; a retired Yorkshire couple who were pursued for a £15,000 tax bill they didn’t even owe and Christopher Trebble, a former IT manager whose supposedly tax-free redundancy payout was under threat.
Such errors come against a background of major change for HMRC, its staff has been reduced by 17,000 in the past three years and over a hundred tax offices closed. Tax complaints to the independent Adjudicator’s Office have doubled in the last three years.
A tax office insider tells the programme that mistakes are now endemic in the system. The woman, who has asked to remain anonymous, says: “Staff have actually been told that when someone rings in with a tax inquiry and you spot a mistake on a person’s record, you have to ignore it unless they have actually asked you to look at that mistake. It’s all about the government target of answering so many calls in a day. And if you write in, the post often goes missing. It just disappears, just gets binned, some letters simply aren’t seen by anyone.”
David Hartnett, the head of tax for HMRC, says: “We do make mistakes, we try to correct our mistakes but for the overwhelming majority of tax payers we get things right day in day out, week in week out and we get a huge number of letters and phone calls and emails from people thanking us for the quality of service we provide. Are our contact centres under pressure? Yes they are. There’s more demand from people wanting to contact us than we’ve ever seen before and we are determined to improve our performance – it’s not good enough at the minute.”
In a statement the HMRC told us: "HMRC staff are never instructed to dispose of post before it is properly processed and to do so would result in disciplinary action. HMRC staff are also required to correct any errors on taxpayer records that that they become aware of.
“Contact Centre staff are not subject to time limits or targets when dealing with customers and are required to address any outstanding issues on the customer’s record.
"The total number of complaints received by HMRC have in fact fallen from a high of 104,000 in 2005/06 to 81,947 in 2007/08.”
If you’ve got a complaint about HM Revenue & Customs you can contact your local MP, or the organisations below:
HM Revenue & Customs
The independent Adjudicator's Office
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman
Tonight will be keeping and eye on the taxman’s progress so it you’ve a problem and would be willing to take part in a programme, please contact us.