Assessing Self Assessment. Response to the Public Consultation on Self Assessment
Day to Day Work in Local Offices
13.
In the first year of operation of such a major reform, local tax offices,
like tax agents, had to cope with a host of changes as well as great deal
of pressure. Inevitably, some mistakes did occur, and some things did
not go entirely to plan.
14.
While recognising the efforts of staff, and the difficult circumstances
they had to cope with, respondents were particularly concerned about:
- errors
such as issuing returns to trusts or estates wound up some time ago;
not always logging the receipt of returns; capturing information on
returns on to our computer systems inaccurately, such as figures, changes
of address or agent references; failing to deal properly with additional
information on, or sent in with, returns, such as requests to reduce
payments on account or to allocate payments in a particular way; 'correcting'
returns incorrectly; being inflexible where only small amounts of liability
were involved; providing insufficient explanations of corrections made;
and failing to code out tax due when requested to do so. Understandably,
these sort of errors were particularly irritating for agents when they
resulted in incorrect reminders, penalty notices, statements of account
or repayments; when it appeared to their clients that they had not done
a proper job; and when they, or their clients, then had to incur additional
costs to get things put right;
-
inconsistency between local offices, for example in the coding
out of underpayments, the treatment of loss and averaging claims or
requests to carry back pension premiums, the in-year issue of returns
on request and the treatment of provisional figures on returns;
-
delay getting through to some offices by telephone - particularly
at peak times, having returns (particularly partnership returns) dealt
with, getting replies to letters and receiving repayments; and
- breakdowns
in internal communications,
particularly where a request to reduce a payment on account had been
made but action was still being taken to collect the full amount.
15.
Growing familiarity with the new system should result in fewer errors,
greater consistency, reduced delay and better internal communications
in the future. Even so, we are taking a number of steps to improve further
the level of service provided to taxpayers and agents.
16. We have already:
- clarified
the guidance on the 1997/98 tax return about the treatment of pence;
-
given local offices additional guidance - for example, on how to handle
small differences between the taxpayer's calculation of liability and
our own; and
- provided
our staff with additional training, with a particular emphasis on areas
where difficulties arose in the first year.
17.
In addition, we are currently:
-
reviewing how the weight of Self Assessment work varies during the year,
so as to achieve the best possible alignment of staff resources and
workloads;
-
strengthening the quality control and assurance work carried out in
local offices;
- piloting
this year - with a view to rolling out to all offices next year - a
national quality monitoring system, which will particularly target those
areas which have given rise to errors so far; and
-
preparing clearer guidance in our forms and publications on specific
points, such as the treatment of provisional figures on tax returns,
which caused difficulty or uncertainties for taxpayers and agents.
