Inland Revenue - is there a complaints procedure?

And with the changes happening you'll be waiting until at least July

Its all changed now in [STRIKE]The Inland Revenue[/STRIKE] HMRC. About 2 years ago they started to introduce LEAN. The idea behind Lean is everyone does one particular job on the production line. There is no urgent post, its all done on a first in first out basis and nothing gets sifted at all. Post comes in in piles, gets devided as band O, AO or AA post and is distributed to the masses.

If you get a peice of work which is particularly time consuming, you HAVE to do it. You also HAVE to hit a target each our or explain to your manager why you didn't. There is no more using your own initiative, no more working the entire case through to completion, you just do your little bit, and pass it on.

Best thing to do is contact the complaints department and put in a complaint. This will be dealt with by an experienced band O who will deal with your case from start to finish (and will do a good job too)

fengirl wrote: »

... these delays are all the result of cutbacks in frontline staff throughout the civil service. I think the government thought, never having worked with the British public in a tax office, that self assessment would make everything automated and hunky dory. Of course it doesnt work like that because most people dont have a clue about their tax affairs, hence forums like this.

Could't agree more. Unfortunately the cutting of frontline staff is set to continue although senior management posts appear to be increasing on an almost daily basis.

As already stated the only thing you can do is follow the complaints procedure (as provided by fengirl), although I would suggest you go straight to the complaints manager. Please also ensure that you keep a note of all conversations you have with HMRC.

marcmanu wrote: »

My father who worked same place as me, same tax office, etc etc, got his within 3 weeks after putting his tax return in 8 days before i did!!!!
yet they cannot answer why i am still waiting.

This is one of the more annoying aspects of HMRC - the complete lack of fairness and equal treatment - just complete randomness as to who's desk it lands which determines how quickly/correctly something is done.

For one client we had, we were waiting 18 months (yes, that's right months!) for the VAT office to deal with a very simple request. They just ignored reminders and even official complaints were never dealt with by management - they seemed to get "lost" as well. Eventually, I managed to speak to a senior manager - solely due to my persistence and it turned out that the original correspondence was languishing in an in-tray of someone who went on maternity leave and never came back - apparently she was expected back in around six months, so her workload was never re-allocated and then no-one thought to do anything about the "work in progress" when she decided not to return.

We've found it is only the simplest of cases that get dealt with quickly and correctly. The moment anything looks slightly complicated it seems the paperwork becomes a "hot potato" that gets passed around as people look at it and try to offload it as quickly as possible to someone else, simply because some of them can't be bothered to do difficult work themselves.

As each year goes by, we always think things can only get better, but HMRC constantly surprise us by being more inefficient than ever the following year. As a case in point, we've become accustomed to lacklustre service from many tax offices, but our local office seemed to buck the trend and we had few problems with them - the last 2 or 3 months have been a nightmare though - we've had virtually no "service" from them at all - we're sending 2 and 3 reminders for almost everything and have even lodged several complaints, which is something we've never had to do previously.

All you can do is persist. Whenever you write, always include copies of all prior correspondence, so there is no excuse for whoever picks up your letter to be able to see the history and act upon it - it's too easy for them to simply fob you off by saying they've no record of receiving the papers and asking you to send them again - pre-empt it so that they have no excuse. Same with the complaints procedure - don't hold back thinking things may improve - they won't - get the ball rolling with your initial complaint to the customer services manager, then to the district inspector and up to MP and ombudsmen level if you aren't seeing progress.

jimmo wrote: »

Aah, you’re only a baby! In my early days it was “under 7” and “over 7”.
When it moved to “over 14” that, to me, was probably the first step in the political “improvement” of IR which has led to its current status.

When you refer to 7 and 14, presumably you mean weeks;) - Yes I know you mean days but that's just so far away from reality it's a bad joke - and it's nothing recent either - I've been an accountant for 25 years and even back in the 80's and 90's it was a surprise for anything to be dealt with within a month - the difference was that it was usually dealt with properly, albeit typically 1-2 months, but there was usually little or no need to go back to correct things done wrong by HMRC staff. Nowadays, not only do things take months rather than weeks, even when something is done, it is more often that not, done wrong and then you have another delay of another couple of months before the correction. A case in point are PAYE coding notices - the shoddy way in which these are churned out tends to suggest very poor training and complete disinterest from the staff engaged to do it!

jimmo wrote: »

They moved the goalposts to improve the image but didn’t consider the effect it had on the staff.

But they clearly didn't consider the effect it had on the taxpayers either, so just who were the changes made to benefit?