Why are we changing?
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is taking forward a programme of reform which affects most central Government tribunals. The reforms are aimed at modernising and improving the way tribunals work and the services they deliver to users. The Tribunals Service was set up in the MoJ in April 2006 and the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act received Royal Assent in 2007.
However, within the overall reform programme, the MoJ is reforming the tribunals that deal with tax appeals and Tax Appeals Modernisation goes live on 1 April 2009. In addition, HMRC are taking this opportunity to review and improve our dispute resolution procedures.
HMRC collects more than £450bn a year to fund government services. We can't do this without making decisions, and we make well over a million decisions each year. We are one of the most important makers of decisions anywhere in government.
Not everyone agrees with our decisions and we receive over 200,000 appeals every year. The vast majority of appeals and other disputes are settled by agreement between us and the customer and we expect this to continue.
The decisions we make underpin the HMRC purpose in making sure that money is available to fund the UK's public services and help further our vision of closing the tax gap. We make decisions ranging from issuing fixed penalties for filing returns late, through to challenging the amounts declared on returns and right up to challenging complex avoidance schemes involving many millions of pounds. We have to make decisions to do our job.
Our vision requires us to be even handed and to try to resolve disputes with our customers as soon as possible. But our customers must also have a right of appeal against our decisions to a tribunal, which is wholly independent of HMRC. This helps to ensure that the overall tax system is seen as fair and just.