Download or read book HM Revenue and Customs Improvement Plan written by and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book HM Revenue Customs Transformation Programme written by Great Britain. National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2008 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The compliance and enforcement programme written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-03 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Compliance and Enforcement Programme , a major HMRC programme to improve the way it tackles evasion, delivered £4.32 billion of additional tax yield between 2006 and 2011. It also forecasts that it will generate an additional £8.87 billion of yield between 2011-12 and 2014-15. It also reduced staff numbers and introduced a range of improvements in its compliance work. The Department has introduced new capabilities, notably the use of IT to identify incidences of evasion more effectively, although it is not yet exploiting the full potential of the new systems. It also had to defer and reduce the scope of projects to keep within annual budgetary limits, leading to reductions in benefits. The Compliance and Enforcement Programme cost £387 million to 2011-12 and was made up of over 40 projects. It aimed to increase compliance yield - the measure of additional tax arising from compliance work - by £4.56 billion between 2006-2011. However, HMRC will not achieve all of the Programme's forecast benefits because of changes to scope or slippage in delivering projects, as well as over-optimism in its forecasts. HMRC did not routinely measure the impact of the Programme on customer experience and it could achieve better value for money from its investment in compliance work by improved understanding of the impact of individual projects and ensuring that its staff have the capacity to exploit new systems to the full

Download or read book Administration and effectiveness of HM Revenue and Customs written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Treasury Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-07-30 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report identified serious concerns in a number of areas, including: unacceptable difficulties contacting HMRC by phone during peak periods; endemic delays in responding to post; and an increasing focus on online communication that may exclude those without reliable internet access. The Committee recognises that the Department performs a crucial role and operates under significant external pressures including continuing resource reductions, deficiencies in tax legislation and the legacy of the merger. It also acknowledges the commitment of management to tackling these problems and the dedication and professionalism of HMRC staff. However, it concluded that the Department has a difficult few years ahead of it, as it attempts to improve its service. The Committee makes recommendations in the following areas: Improving the service provided by contact centres; providing robust alternative to online contact; ensuring greater awareness of the impact of process changes on individuals and businesses; ensuring reductions in resources are managed in a way that is commensurate with the enabling IT and process improvements and minimises the loss of Departmental tax expertise; reviewing the division of responsibilities between HMRC and HM Treasury in relation to making tax policy, to ensure practical considerations are taken into account at the earliest possible stage; better targeting of letters that threaten serious consequences against individuals; having the National Audit Office externally audit preparations for Real-time Information, to ensure Ministers can be held accountable for progress against the Government's ambitious timetable; and examining how the Department can achieve better accountability around the settlement of large tax cases

Download or read book Departmental report 2007 H M Revenue Customs written by Great Britain: H.M. Revenue & Customs and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2007-05-25 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dated May 2007. On cover: Integrating and growing stronger. Spring 2007

Download or read book Core skills at written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-12-02 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Reducing costs in HM Revenue Customs written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-07-20 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HM Revenue & Customs faces a significant challenge in securing a £1.6 billion reduction in running costs over the next four years, at the same time as increasing tax revenues, improving customer service and achieving reductions in welfare payments. HMRC has reported savings of some £1.4 billion since 2005. To achieve its cost reductions it plans to implement 24 change projects and other measures including savings in the provision of IT services, improvements in productivity, reduced sickness absence and headcount reductions. The size and shape of HMRC will change substantially as it reduces staff numbers by 10,000 and significantly reduces the number of offices it operates. HMRC has established a clear vision and specified operational priorities and revenue targets. It has not yet sufficiently defined the business performance and customer service it intends to achieve by 2015. It has good information on the different costs it incurs but only limited information on the cost of its end-to-end processes and on the cost of servicing different customers groups. It also has a limited understanding of the link between the cost and value of its activities. This has restricted its ability to assess fully the impact of cost reductions on business performance. HMRC has made no allowance in its cost reduction plans for under-delivery or slippage, and currently has no reserve of proposals on which to draw. HMRC has begun to implement its cost reduction plans but has not yet assessed all the dependencies between projects and the critical path for delivery.

Download or read book HM Revenue Customs written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HMRC estimates that the tax gap - the difference between taxes due and the amount actually collected - stood at £35 billion (7.9% of tax due) in 2009-10, although other estimates suggest the figure is much greater. The Compliance and Enforcement Programme brought in £4.32 billion of tax revenue over the five years to 2010-11and is expected to generate a further £8.87 billion by 2014-15. However, in shedding more than 3,300 staff, the Department lost £1.1 billion in potential tax revenue: about £10 in tax lost for every £1 in running costs saved. The Committee is also not confident that the Department is sufficiently clear about the marginal rate of return it could achieve from different levels of spending. In order to live within funding limits, the Department had to defer the introduction of new systems or reduce their scope. In particular, by delaying implementation of its new Caseflow and Spectrum systems, the Department reduced the expected additional tax revenue of £743 million by 2010-11 to £547 million by 2014-15. In this Spending Review period £917 million has been allocated to further activities to tackle tax evasion and avoidance, and to collect more debt. This investment is more than double the money spent on the Programme over the last five years, and is expected to generate an additional £7 billion a year by 2014-15. It is therefore essential that the Department learns and applies lessons learnt. There was also alarm at reports that the Department had advised that the use of managed service companies to avoid tax could ever be appropriate for full-time employees of public bodies

Download or read book Hm Revenue and Customs Estate Private Finance Deal Eight Years On written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NAO report published as HC 30, Session 2009-10.

Download or read book HM Revenue and Customs 2009 10 accounts written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-02 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The flawed implementation of the National Insurance and PAYE Service (NPS) in 2009-10 has resulted in lasting and costly losses for the Department and caused unacceptable uncertainty and inconvenience to the taxpayer. Software problems delayed the processing of 2008-09 PAYE returns by a year - and data quality issues have further disrupted the issue of tax codes for 2010-11. The Department has failed to tackle a backlog of 18 million PAYE cases from 2007-08 and earlier, affecting an estimated 15 million taxpayers. The exact amounts of tax involved are not known, but estimates suggest £1.4 billion of tax was underpaid and there is £3.0 billion of overpaid tax to be refunded. The Department has launched a programme to stabilise the NPS by 2012. It is vital that it demonstrates the ability of the system to process PAYE promptly, accurately and efficiently and restores customer confidence. In future, it should process everyone's PAYE within twelve months of the end of the tax year. It must also make sure it maximises the net revenue it collects before the deadline expires for 2007-08 underpayments of tax, and that it achieves its aim of processing 2008-09 and 2009-10 PAYE by the end of January 2011. In other areas, the Department has increased its focus on preventing fraud and error in the tax credits system and is aiming to prevent £1.4 billion of error and fraud in awards for 2010-11. It is measuring its progress against a series of targets, which it is currently meeting.

Download or read book Progress on Reducing Costs written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In challenging circumstances in 2011-12, HM Revenue and Customs maintained its performance in key strategic areas at the same time as reducing its staff and spending. The challenge for HMRC will be to make more and deeper reductions over the spending review period while increasing tax revenues, improving customer service and introducing its 'real time information' project and changes to benefits and credits. HMRC made £296 million of savings in 2011-12, exceeding its target by 19 per cent. This is about a third of the total savings it is required to make over the four years of the spending review period. However, HMRC expects these projects to save £162 million less over the spending review period than when the NAO last reported on this subject, in July 2011. This is partly because its forecasts are now more refined and realistic, and partly because, as some projects took longer to start, the benefits will take longer to be realised. HMRC has strengthened how it manages its change programme in ways that address NAO and Public Accounts Committee recommendations. The Department has also started to address the recommendations that it should improve its understanding of interdependencies between projects and of the cost and value of its activities though it has more to do in these areas. At September 2012, HMRC was on track to exceed its 2012-13 cost reduction target by £29 million. However, the reduction in planned savings being delivered by change projects means that HMRC needs to find £66 million more savings than it originally planned through other initiatives

Download or read book HM Revenue and Customs written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-12-03 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report looks at a range of issues among HM Revenue & Customs' activities, but principally into the corporation tax paid by multinational companies. International companies are able to exploit national and international tax structures to minimise corporation tax on the economic activity they conduct in the UK. It is believed that this practice is widespread and that HMRC is not taking sufficiently aggressive action to assess and collect the appropriate amount of corporation tax. Both HMRC and corporate taxpayers are failing to meet the legitimate public expectations from the tax system. Evidence received was unconvincing, in some cases evasive, and there is concern that multinationals have an unfair competitive advantage. A change of mindset needs also to apply to HMRC's approach to the Tax Gap - the difference between tax collected and that which, in the Department's view, should be collected. While total tax revenues have increased by £4 billion since 2010-11, the Department's own assessment of the gap stands at £32 billion and has only reduced by £1 billion since 2004-05. HMRC deserves praise for clearing the backlog of un-reconciled legacy PAYE cases, before its target of December 2012, but is too complacent about the service it provides to customers. The next challenges HMRC faces are the roll-out of the Real Time Information system and the changes to child benefit. The system is vital for the Department for Work and Pensions' introduction of Universal Credit, but HMRC has no contingency planning to cope with any delays in implementation. The Department's performance in reducing the level of error and fraud on the tax credits it pays has got worse rather than better, and it has failed to meet its target

Download or read book Pacesetter written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HM Revenue & Customs' PaceSetter Programme, aimed at streamlining business operations, has improved productivity through new ways of working and may have contributed to greater staff engagement. However, the National Audit Office has concluded that the Programme is not yet value for money because the extent to which efficiency has improved is not clear; and some key principles of process improvement are not yet being applied strategically across the entire organisation and embedded into the Department's core processes. PaceSetter, introduced five years ago, is designed to help HMRC change the way it works, to deliver more for less resource. The Department has pioneered the use of process improvement techniques in central government. Improvements include the redesign of claim forms and the standardisation of procedures across offices. The Department estimated that PaceSetter produced productivity improvements, with over £400 million of resource savings and £860 million of tax yield. It is not clear, however, if reported savings represent overall efficiency improvements, in part because of the limited evidence on overall trends in business performance. The PaceSetter Programme has had a small positive impact on staff engagement but overall it is still low. HMRC does not have a full understanding of the costs of PaceSetter. The Department decided to monitor only certain of the costs excluding the salary costs of its own PaceSetter experts. NAO analysis shows a more complete assessment of costs brings the total spent on PaceSetter from £55 million to at least £115 million between 2005-06 and 2010-11.To maximise the benefits of PaceSetter, the Department needs to use the Programme to help it streamline its business operations in a more strategic way.

Download or read book Customer Service Performance written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-12-18 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Property Tax Planning written by Philip Spencer and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-11-29 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Property Tax Planning is an indispensable property guide for tax practitioners, property lawyers, surveyors, and property owners. With worked examples throughout, it clearly highlights the tax planning opportunities and potential pitfalls that may arise during property transactions in the UK. This logical and user-friendly book is divided into four sections reflecting the four categories of property ownership: property investors, property dealers and developers, trading premises, and private residences. Within each category, all relevant tax planning areas are outlined chapter by chapter, with reference to UK legislation and case law. The highly practical layout of this thirteenth edition will help to quickly establish problem areas and potential tax breaks. It has been fully revised and updated to the UK's latest Finance Act.

Download or read book HMRC written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-03-18 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2011-12, 20 million phone calls to HMRC were not answered. It cost the callers £136 million while they waited to speak to an adviser. And, against its target of responding to 80% of letters within 15 days, the department managed to reply to just 66%. Officials are beginning to realize that good customer service lies at the heart of any strategy to maximize revenues while cutting costs. Callers will no longer be forced to use the more expensive 0845 numbers. Other planned changes include the resolution of more queries first time and a call-back service where this is not possible. However, HMRC's new target of answering 80% of calls within five minutes is still woefully short of the industry standard of answering 80% of calls within 20 seconds. Just how the department is going to improve standards of customer service, given the prospect of its having fewer staff and receiving a higher volume of calls, is open to question. HMRC plans to cut the number of customer-facing staff by a third by 2015. At the same time, the stresses associated with introducing the Real Time Information System, Universal Credit and changes to child benefit are likely to drive up the number of phone calls to the department. HMRC is also to close all of its 281 enquiry centres which give face-to-face advice to customers. HMRC considers that it will be able to improve service standards by using its staff more flexibly. It may need to put in additional resources, though, to avoid the kind of plummeting performance we have seen in the past

Download or read book The expansion of online filing of tax returns written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-11-11 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HMRC's programme to increase online filing of tax returns has made significant progress. HMRC was set an ambitious timetable to expand the use of online filing and now more than 11.5 million customers a year are submitting one or more tax returns online, generating significant savings. Take-up rates have increased significantly, particularly after mandatory online filing requirements have come into force. Nevertheless, take-up rates on some taxes (VAT, Corporation Tax and Self-Assessment) have been below original forecasts and HMRC has lowered its forecasts in the light of take-up achieved so far. Customers generally recognise the efficiencies and practical benefits that online filing offers although HMRC has yet to measure whether the anticipated benefits and costs to customers are being achieved in practice. Some users have concerns about the costs and usability of filing VAT and Corporation Tax returns online, and about delays in getting login details to access the Self-Assessment online service during peak periods. Levels of satisfaction with the assistance offered through various helpdesks also vary. Online filing is delivering significant savings to HMRC, an estimated £126 million so far. HMRC cannot demonstrate whether it is maximising benefits as it does not yet fully understand the relative costs of dealing with paper and online returns or the costs and benefits of seeking greater take-up.