Stephen Banyard - Chair (Business Customer Unit)
Derek Allen - ICAS
Paul Aplin - ICAEW
Andrew Hubbard - CIOT
John Kimmer - ATT
Brian Palmer - AAT
Chas Roy-Chowdury - ACCA
Simon Sweetman (FSB)
Chris Scott – representing Graeme Ross (KPMG)
Roger Halson - Business Customer Unit
Andrea Hargreaves - Large Business Service
Jane Gilchrist - Customer Contact
Andrew Leggett - Enforcement & Compliance Operations
Matt Blake - Commissioners Advisory Accountant
Martin Sellar - CAR Residency
Tony Kelly - Tax Agents & Advisers Team
Mark Young - Tax Agents & Advisers Team
Suzanne West - Tax Agents & Advisers Team
Madeline A McGrillen - Tax Agents & Advisers Team
Kim Nicholas - Tax Agents & Advisers Team
Chris Buckels - Tax Agents & Advisers Team (Minutes)
Stephen Banyard welcomed everyone to the meeting and re-iterated that these meetings operated under ‘Chatham House’ rules and encouraged open and honest communication.
Meeting papers for this meeting were issued on Tuesday 9th Jan and followed
up by a supplementary paper on Wednesday 10th Jan. Noted that this is still
insufficient time for the papers to be read and comments formed.
*AP1 – In future HMRC will undertake to circulate papers 10 working days ahead of the meeting.
Agreed beneficial if agent members consult on the groups working papers within
their organisation. Papers could be circulated within agents central teams
unless noted as sensitive/confidential by HMRC, (e.g. Offshore Accounts papers).
It was noted that there was no representation of agents dealing with indirect taxation, inheritance tax and trusts, or the agent community in Ireland.
*AP2 – Roger Halson to review membership and consider extending to The Institute of Indirect Taxation, (IIT), The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, (STEP), and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, (ICAI).
Roger reflected on the key points arising from those meetings. Shared Vision
was seen as aspirational but desirable. In particular shared risk rules and
Customer Relationship Manager role were viewed as a major step forward. Defining
standards also seen as an important issue in terms of reconciling HMRC requirements
and those of the external professions.
Concerns about the pace of change within HMRC and that well managed consultation on change issues were essential. Accepted on both sides a lot of work involved to communicate messages within the Shared Vision effectively.
Agent members advised it would be helpful if the final product/outcome was set out clearly to enable them to, ‘sell’, the Shared Vision to colleagues. They advised that clarity on the tangible benefits for the agent community would help them fully understand the part they play and assist in selling the message to their members.
Discussion followed on the benefits for the agents in terms of the Pre – return Assurance work stream. Mark Young covered the outline principles of the proposed process and explained how this would fit with HMRC risk intervention planning.
*AP3 – Roger to arrange meeting with Chas Roy-Chowdhury to further discuss Shared Vision.
Roger Halson advised only one applicant to date but without the required level of commercial experience. Agent members advised that to get someone of the experience we require on a full time basis will be extremely difficult and suggested offering the secondment on a part time or short term consultancy basis.
*AP4 – HMRC Agents & Advisers Team to re-consider the alternatives for gaining agent input on a part time or short term secondment basis.
Stephen Banyard advised whilst there were no hard boundaries between the groups and there was always a degree of overlap on issues, that the roles of the following groups are:-
Tax Agents & Advisers Steering Group, (TA&ASG)
The premier body of the agent consultation groups. This group’s role is to set the strategy/future vision, manage the relationship between HMRC and the agent and adviser community, oversee the lower groups and deal with major issues.
Working Together Steering Group, (WTSG)
Problem solving role, focussed more on current issues together with overseeing the local relationship and advising on changes, (e.g. the ‘e’ group on Carter).
Joint VAT Consultative Committee, (JVCC), & Operational Consultative Committee, (OCC)
Technical and policy issues and those involving major change.
To better understand the role and structure of consultation groups and bring some clarity as to how the groups fit/work together Roger Halson talked to the Agent Relationship paper and associated proposed model for managing our relationship with Tax Agents and Advisors.
Roger advised he has mapped the agent reps of each consultative group shown in the model and will issue this map to the TAASG members to agree or otherwise as to whether these groups have the appropriate representative members with the appropriate brief and intentions.
It was agreed that it will prove beneficial if the TAASG take an overview of the consultation groups and Rogers proposed model was accepted in principle as a logical way forward. Referring to the map the TAASG decided that the Compliance Reform Group should be a sub-group of the TAASG and not the WTSG.
*AP5 – Roger to issue mapping of agent reps on Consultative groups document to steering group reps.
Telephone Pilot
Jane Gilchrist provided an update on the Contact Centre telephone pilot that is trialing new ways of directing agents’ calls to technical advisers. The pilot will be evaluated in terms of efficiency and customer satisfaction. HMRC are also looking closely at national data they already collect about why agents call Contact Centres. We hope this analysis will help us to identify opportunities to improve our services to agents. Data collected through the Manchester pilot will also inform this work.
Pilot launched 1.12.06 at the Manchester Contact Centre, which was chosen due to available resources and its relatively high volume of agent’s calls. 2,400 agents who use the Manchester Contact Centre were invited to take part in the pilot and feedback sheets, which take around 30 seconds to complete, were supplied and also made available on line via the Working Together web pages.
A website publicity article was prepared and distributed. Jane thanked Derek Allen for publicising the pilot on the ICAS website and extended that thanks to any other agent reps who did the same.
The number of calls and the amount of feedback received to date are considered disappointingly low especially as January is usually a peak time for calls to Contact Centres. Figures up to 13 January show:-
378 calls received on the new pilot line numbers
90 feedback sheets received
The ‘agent priority line’, a service in existence before the pilot started is still operating as part of one of the pilot options (the ‘control’ group). Not possible to tease out how many of the calls made to this line are being made by pilot participants, as agents who are not taking part will also use it.
Jane requested agent reps strongly encourage their members to take full part in the pilot as it is due to end in February and needs much more use and feedback to enable sound analysis.
*AP6 – Jane Gilchrist to issue an e-mail to all agent reps of the TAASG to ask them to encourage use of the pilot lines and feedback process and request any suggestions of how HMRC can gain increased input from the agent community. (Suggestions to be sent via e-mail to either Jane or Keith Lang of Business Customer Unit).
CRM Package
Suzanne West talked to her meeting update paper, ‘Improving Services to Agents’, regarding the Customer Relationship Management, (CRM) package. She emphasised the need for volunteers to help design the package, (particularly the agent induction pack), and had requested volunteer nominations by 12.02.07. Agent members advised this was not a realistic deadline in light of agent resources still coping with the work that has built up whilst meeting the deadlines for Self assessment filing.
*AP7 – It was agreed to postpone the 12.02.07 deadline for CRM trial volunteers by a month. Volunteer nominations now requested by 16.03.07.
Pre-Return Assurance
Mark Young talked to his meeting update paper ‘Pre return processes’, and asked for views on the suggested way forward.
Agent members confirmed happy to co-operate but concerns regarding training considerations and need to build this into their organisations training schedules.
Agent Identification
Tony Kelly had issued a meeting update paper to the group, ‘Creation of agent database’, but due to time constraints there was no discussion on this.
*AP8 – TAASG members to respond to Tony Kelly or Madeline McGrillen in respect of the request for views on the proposed outline of the database by 19.02.07.
Pace of the work
General concerns that HMRC were trying to do too much at once, too quickly.
Stephen Banyard accepted the concerns regarding the pace and pressure for
change at what is a very busy time for agents. He advised HMRC enthusiasm
is due to the need for early progress in the compliance area to confirm our
willingness to change and deliver tangible outcomes that positively demonstrate
this.
Roger Halson suggested a March meeting of the TAASG to revisit the strategic issues of the Agent Strategy to give agents a picture of the pilots and where they fit in the HMRC’s overall strategy and what are the clear deliverables and benefits to the agent community.
*AP9 – Chris Buckels to arrange a March meeting of the TAASG.
Martin Sellar gave an update on the progress of this project. Project working group was proving positive and did include some members of the TAASG.
Agent members expressed strong concerns regarding the tight deadlines on the time limits to declare offshore accounts and questioned the rules and process around this. They advised the initiative has the potential to affect approximately 1 million account holders and the impact on agents to meet the declaration deadlines will present resource issues, particularly for small firms. They may also have problems dealing with technical aspects of these disclosures.
Martin Sellar advised that guidance booklets have been drawn up for issue and followed up with a PowerPoint presentation accompanied by handouts on the on line system for declaring offshore accounts. Due to overrunning of the meeting all agent reps were not able to stay and view this presentation. It was noted that those able to view were Chas Roy-Chowdhury, Simon Sweetman. Derek Allen and Andrew Hubbard.
