This week, it was revealed in an article by the Daily Mail that HMRC civil servants are gardening, dog walking and playing video games, while a £100m office in Cardiff sits empty and taxpayers wait year-long waits to hear from them. Bradley Post, Managing Director of RIFT, reckons it’s about time HMRC has more staff in the office.
The Mail recorded just 976 staff entering the 4,500 strong office space in Cardiff, leaving some 3,524 seats empty. Gov data shows that with 5,501,000 SME businesses across the nation employing 16,432,000 people, the vacant space in HMRC’s Cardiff office is enough to house 1,180 SME businesses at an average number of three employees.
Bradley Post, RIFTWhat’s more, further analysis of the latest Gov data released this week has shown that HMRC’s department HQ in London is home to the lowest occupancy rate of all Government department head offices, with the exception of the Office for the Secretary of State for Scotland.
The department HQ of the Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland at Dover House has a daily average staff occupancy rate of just 33%.
The occupancy rate of HMRC’s department HQ at 100 Parliament Street is only slightly higher at 48% and the only other in the list to fail to break the 50% threshold.
In contrast, the Cabinet Office HQ at 70 Whitehall has the highest occupancy rate of all Gov HQs at 76%.
HMRC understandably holds very firm when it comes to the deadlines taxpayers need to meet whether it be for filing paperwork or paying their taxes.
REDUCING RESOURCES
However, it has come under fire of late for reducing resources, such as the sporadic closure of its tax helpline, and many taxpayers have been left in the lurch without the advice and guidance they need. Not to mention subject to considerable delays in receiving the paperwork they require to properly pay their taxes.
So when you also couple this below par service with the fact that less than half of its staff are even making it to the office, it certainly raises some red flags about whether or not things could be done better.
Tax advice agents such as RIFT can only go some way in picking up the slack when it comes to the help and guidance we provide, however, we certainly can’t improve HMRC’s internal operations and it’s the taxpayer that continues to pay as a result.
