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Helping individuals understand and complete their tax forms

Author : Great Britain: National Audit Office

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 44 pages

File Size : 42,79 MB

Release : 2007-04-27

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 9780102945041

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Book Description

Each year up to 10 million taxpayers contact the HM Revenue and Customs for help with their tax affairs and the Department spends £35 million on producing and distributing printed information and £55 million dealing with contacts. This report looks at the type of communication between the Department and the individual taxpayer whether forms and guidance are easy to obtain, easy to understand, accurate and comprehensive. The potential benefits and savings in making services more responsive to customer needs have previously been highlighted and the Department has already instituted some changes, with more being planned. This report contains recommendations to continue this process.





HM Revenue & Customs

Author : Great Britain. National Audit Office

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 40 pages

File Size : 15,60 MB

Release : 2010

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9780102963403

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Book Description

In 2008-09 HM Revenue and Customs' Customer Contact Directorate, which answers 95 per cent of calls to the Department's contact centres, only answered 57 per cent of 103 million call attempts, compared with 71 per cent in the year before and an industry benchmark of over 90 per cent.



HM Revenue and Customs

Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 40 pages

File Size : 49,92 MB

Release : 2008

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 9780215520432

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Book Description

Helping people to provide accurate information about their tax affairs is essential if they are to pay the right amount of tax. Accurate and timely information also helps to reduce the cost to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) of seeking information or correcting errors. HMRC spends £35 million a year on producing and distributing printed forms and other guidance, and £55 million a year answering 12.5 million enquiries on how to complete forms through 13 telephone helplines, face to face meetings at 279 enquiry centres or via its website. It handles over 20 million telephone calls a year from taxpayers. Its performance in answering telephone calls has improved with 72 per cent of calls answered within 20 seconds in 2006-07, compared with 45 per cent in 2005-06. But it is still below the general industry benchmark of 80 per cent. HMRC is encouraging people to use the most cost-effective method of contact that meets their needs. Improving its forms and guidance, as well as its website, should reduce avoidable calls. It estimates that it could save over £100 million by encouraging more people to use its website and online services. It is estimated that 3.3 million taxpayers filing Income Tax Self Assessment returns understated their tax by £2.8 billion in the 2001-02 tax year. Of this, around £330 million arose from unintentional mistakes by taxpayers. HMRC provides accurate and complete advice in 95 per cent of telephone enquiries. But taxpayers sometimes receive inaccurate or incomplete advice because more complicated enquiries are not always referred to expert staff.



Accuracy in processing income tax

Author : Great Britain: National Audit Office

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 52 pages

File Size : 23,60 MB

Release : 2007-07-06

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 0102946744

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Book Description

This NAO report, examines the Department of HM Revenue and Customs accuracy in processing Self Assessment Tax forms and the PAYE scheme for Income Tax. In the 2006-07, the Department collected £149 billion in Income Tax, dealing with the tax affairs of some 36 million taxpayers. In total, £125 billion was collected via employers through the PAYE scheme and £24 billion from self employed people, and others with additional income through the Tax Self Assessment. The Department needs to spend about £1.7 billion per year in administering Income Tax, with the processing taking place across the Department's 300 offices. This report draws some of the following conclusions: that the correct tax assessment occurs in 95.4% of cases; there is a 96.5% accuracy in processing Self Assessment, whilst PAYE cases were 95.1% accurate (but 25% of PAYE cases are more complex, with more processing needed, and so a greater error rate, at 82.1%, is found in these instances). The Department itself estimates inaccurate processing has led to 3.6 million errors in Self Assessment and 2.8 million errors on PAYE in 2006-07. Taking all the various processing errors together, just over 1 million taxpayers in this period had received £125 million in underpayments of tax and £157 million in overpayments. The most frequent type of error is in the Department's calculation of tax codes, which are used by employers to calculate deductions of income tax from employees' pay, with 63% of the PAYE error rate relating to tax codes. Among the report's recommendations are: that HM Customs & Revenue should continue with the quality monitoring, identifying specific types of error; they should facilitate the sharing of good practice across the tax offices; further develop an early warning system, through the analysis of trends in monthly data; separate out more complex cases to process by specialised teams and develop a customer-focused approach by tracking the effect of error rates on the different taxpayer groups.



Progress in Tackling Benefit Fraud

Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 52 pages

File Size : 35,10 MB

Release : 2008

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 9780215521576

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Book Description

Benefit fraud is a crime and undermines public confidence in the benefits system. In 2006-07, the Department for Work and Pensions estimated that it spent some £154 million on tackling fraud, identifying £106 million of overpaid benefit, against total benefit expenditure of £120 billion. The Department estimates that fraud fell from £2 billion in 2001-02 to £800 million in 2006-07, which is 0.6% of benefit expenditure. But the Department must do more to reverse the rise in official and customer error. Estimated error rose from £1 billion in 2001-02 to £1.9 billion in 2006-07. Benefit complexity is believed to be a major cause of error. Increasing the volume of pre-payment checks and encouraging customers to receive benefit payments directly into their bank accounts has prevented some fraud. The Department now works closely with the police, the Serious Organised Crime Agency and local authorities to prevent, identify and act against fraud. But it could make more effective use of its powers and resources. While the Department successfully prosecutes 90 per cent of the cases it takes to court, the Prosecution Division has lost 17 per cent of its staff since 2003. Debt recovery is an essential part of tackling fraud, yet in 2006-07 the Department only recovered £22 million of fraud debt out of a known fraud debt stock of £339 million. The Department has been slow to improve its management information systems, hampering its ability to measure the cost-effectiveness of counter-fraud activities. It has taken from 2003 until February 2008 to roll out a new national management information system, known as FRAIMS, at a cost of £65 million.



Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry

Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Public Administration Select Committee

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 144 pages

File Size : 38,31 MB

Release : 2008

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9780215520708

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Book Description

This report considers the case for Parliament to be able to initiate and conduct inquiries into serious and significant matters of public concern. It takes up the recommendationmade by this committiee's predecessor Committee (in the Government by Inquiry Report) that there should be a parliamentary mechanism for initiating inquiries. These would take the form of Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry, composed of parliamentarians and others. In the Report, the committee examines the justification for creating Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry in particular, that they would enable Parliament to hold the Executive to account more effectively. Then it covers some of the practical issues involved in setting up inquiries of this nature: how Parliament could instigate an inquiry, its composition, and its operation and powers. The committee concludes that it is crucial, in constitutional sense, that Parliament has the necessary powers and abilities to scrutinise the Executive and hold it to account. Proper parliamentary scrutiny should include the ability to establish and undertake inquiries into significant matters of public concern. Parliament has, in the past, conducted investigationsof this kind and as the great forum of the nation, should be expected to do so. The committee's recommendation for Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry would promoteeffective parliamentary accountability by creating a process for Parliament to initiate inquirieswhere it rather than the Executive sees fit.



Preparing for Sporting Success at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and Beyond

Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 48 pages

File Size : 26,6 MB

Release : 2008

Category : Sports & Recreation

ISBN : 9780215522092

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Book Description

The Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and UK Sport have responsibility for elite sport in the UK. To support goals for London 2012, the Government has agreed a package of funding of over £700 million, while the DCMS will be required to raise £100 million from the private sector. This report follows up recommendations in the Committee's previous report on supporting elite athletes published in July 2006 (HC 898, session 2005-06. ISBN 9780215029768). It was found then that many funded sports had not met their medal targets at the Athens games in 2004. In particular concerns were raised about the way UK Sport measured and reported its own performance and the need for greater clarity about the level of performance required from individual sports in order to secure future funding was highlighted. UK Sport continues to plan on the basis that it will receive all of its funding up to 2012. However there remains a risk that the £100 million from the private sector will not all be raised.On the basis of a report by Comptroller and Auditor General (HC 434, session 2007-08, ISBN 9780102953084) the Committee took evidence from the DCMS and UK Sport on their fudning strategy for medial success at London 2012; their setting of targets and monitoring of progress towards the Games; and their approach to securing wider and long term benefits from elite sporting success.



Managing Financial Resources to Deliver Better Public Services

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 48 pages

File Size : 38,96 MB

Release : 2008

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 9780215523549

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Book Description

Annually, central government spends some £558 billion, and this is forecast to increase to £678 billion by 2010-11. Strong and competent financial resources management is central to departments meeting their objectives cost effectively and delivering public services which represent value for money. Since the Committee's last report on this topic (HC 181, 25th report of session 2003-04, ISBN 9780215023636) the number of qualified finance directors with a seat on the departmental board has increased, enhancing the focus on financial performance at senior management level, but the lack of financial skills and awareness amongst non-finance staff remains a barrier to improving financial management more generally across government. Accruals-based accounting and budgeting systems are helping some departments identify under-utilised assets and dispose of those no longer required. Departments need to improve their forecasting capabilities to strengthen budgetary control and to avoid underspends not being identified early enough to reallocate resources to other priorities. Departments are continuing to spend less money than they forecast, particularly on capital projects, increasing the risk that resources are not being allocated across government in the most effective way. Few departmental boards are presented with accurate, timely and integrated financial and operational performance information to enable them to take sufficiently informed decisions on the use of resources and to review performance. Although the Treasury and Cabinet Office have a number of initiative to improve resource management, there is some way to go before financial management is fully embedded within departmental cultures.



Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 32 pages

File Size : 39,94 MB

Release : 2008

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9780215523532

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Book Description

In 2007-08, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (the Department) received £3,617 million from the Treasury. The Accounting Officer is expected to manage these resources efficiently and effectively to deliver a range of services and operations within the funding provided by Parliament. The Department failed to allocate final budgets to each of its business areas until five months into the 2007-08 financial year because: (a) planned expenditure was in excess of funds provided; (b) budget holders did not declare all financial commitments from the outset; and (c) the costs of unforeseen floods and the outbreaks of animal disease had to be managed. A similar situation had arisen in 2006-07 when the Department had to make mid-year budget reductions of £170 million to avoid the risk of overspending. The late notification of the reductions had an adverse impact on performance. In part the problems arise from the difficulties faced in sponsoring 31 delivery bodies, each with its own administrative functions and with different approaches to setting budgets and monitoring progress. Obtaining timely and realistic financial reports from delivery bodies was also difficult. A lack of awareness amongst the Department's Board Members of good financial management practice, together with cultural issues which did not prioritise financial management at a corporate level, added to the challenges. The Department's Management Board has since put in place more rigorous financial and outcome monitoring systems. Having agreed budgets for 2008-09 that accord with the Department's allocation from the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007, the problems of 2006-07 and 2007-08 are not expected to recur in 2008-09.