HMRC Is Shite

HMRC's Tax Propaganda for Eight-Year-Olds

2026-11-10T11:59:39.347+00:00

HMRC's Tax Propaganda for Eight-Year-Olds: Brainwashing the Next Generation of British Taxpayers

Forget teaching children how to build a business, save money or create wealth. HMRC has a rather different lesson plan: convince them that taxation is wonderful, government knows best and life without the taxman would be little short of the Stone Age.

There is something deeply sinister about a government department deciding that children as young as eight need to be educated in the supposed virtues of taxation.

Not educated about how the tax system works. Not taught how to read a payslip, understand National Insurance, calculate VAT or manage their finances.

No. HMRC wants to teach them that taxation is the great benevolent force holding civilisation together.

Welcome to Junior Tax Facts, the Government's attempt to introduce the next generation to the joys of handing over their hard-earned money before they have even had their first Saturday job.

According to revelations published by Guido Fawkes, HMRC's classroom materials, updated this autumn, contain a remarkable series of videos and exercises aimed at children aged between eight and 13. The message is remarkably consistent: tax is good, government spends it wisely, and without it practically everything that makes modern life bearable would disappear.

This isn't balanced financial education. It is a taxpayer recruitment campaign.

And the fact that it is being aimed at primary-school children makes it all the more extraordinary.

Apparently, without tax we'd all be living with woolly mammoths

One of the videos presented to children explains that tax is essentially a giant shared bank account into which everybody pays, with the Government responsible for looking after the money and distributing it for the benefit of everyone.

Already, that is a rather generous description of the relationship between taxpayers and the state.

The video then suggests that without taxation, schools, teachers, hospitals, ambulances, libraries, museums, rubbish collection, police officers and firefighters would all disappear.

Quite a proposition.

The implication is unmistakable: question taxation and you are effectively questioning the existence of civilisation itself.

Another video takes the argument even further, asking children to imagine life in the age of woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and cavemen.

Apparently, without the wonders of taxation, there would have been no teachers, doctors or police officers to protect them from ravenous beasts.

It's difficult to know whether to laugh or despair.

One might reasonably point out that taxation is not the only way of organising and funding services, that different countries operate different systems, and that public services are delivered through a mixture of public institutions, private enterprise and voluntary organisations.

But apparently eight-year-olds are not considered ready for that level of nuance.

Instead, they get the prehistoric horror story.

The missing lesson: governments can waste money too

The most revealing thing about these materials is not what they teach. It is what they leave out.

There is no meaningful examination of the economic consequences of taxation. No acknowledgement that taxes can discourage investment, reduce incentives to work, make employing people more expensive or deter entrepreneurs from starting businesses.

There is apparently no mention of the Laffer Curve, the economic concept illustrating how tax rates can affect the amount of revenue governments ultimately collect.

Nobody seems particularly interested in explaining that higher rates do not automatically produce higher revenues, or that the tax system can influence the decisions people make about working, investing and building businesses.

And what about the other side of the relationship?

Where is the lesson explaining that government spending can be inefficient? That public money can be wasted? That politicians make mistakes? That taxpayers have a right to scrutinise every pound spent?

Children are being taught that the Government looks after the shared bank account.

What they aren't being taught is that the Government is spending somebody else's money.

There is a world of difference between explaining why public services need funding and presenting the state as an endlessly benevolent guardian of everybody's finances.

Children invited to invent new taxes

Things become even more revealing when we move to the materials for secondary-school pupils aged 14 to 17.

One classroom exercise invites students to invent a new 10% tax on an item or service.

They are instructed to give their new tax a name, explain why it is a good idea and justify how it will benefit society.

Read that again.

Children are being asked to devise new taxes and make the case for imposing them.

It is difficult to imagine a more one-sided introduction to the politics of taxation.

Why not ask pupils to invent a new tax cut instead? Why not challenge them to consider whether a proposed tax would damage a business, increase prices, reduce employment or make an industry less competitive?

Why not ask them to debate whether the Government should leave more money in the pockets of the people who earned it?

Instead, the exercise starts with the assumption that a new 10% tax is a perfectly reasonable proposition and asks pupils to sell it to their classmates.

The materials also invite pupils to consider what public services they would be prepared to give up if they could pay less tax.

That is a particularly cynical framing of the debate.

It presents lower taxation as a direct trade-off against essential services, without giving comparable attention to the possibility of reducing waste, improving productivity, reforming inefficient programmes or getting better value from existing spending.

The choice is effectively presented as more tax or fewer services.

How convenient for the Treasury.

The great missing spending departments

Perhaps the most extraordinary exercise is the one asking children aged eight to 13 to rank government spending priorities.

Pupils are presented with six categories:

Health
Protecting the environment
Museums
Armed forces
Education
Police

They must rank them from the most deserving of money to the least deserving.

There are apparently no wrong answers.

Except there are some rather conspicuous omissions.

Where is welfare spending? Where is debt interest? Where are pensions? Where is the cost of government administration? Where is the money spent on benefits, subsidies and the vast machinery of the state?

Children are invited to decide whether museums deserve more money than the armed forces, but not whether the Government should spend less on its own enormous welfare commitments.

They can debate how to divide the pie, but they aren't really invited to question how big the pie should be.

That is the fundamental problem with this approach.

A genuinely educational exercise would ask children how government spending is funded, what the competing demands are, whether spending is effective and whether there is a limit to how much money the state can reasonably take from the public.

Instead, the state gets to set the boundaries of the discussion.

Nearly £1 trillion in tax revenue. And they want more?

The timing makes this particularly galling.

HMRC's own annual accounts show that it generated £966.4 billion in tax revenue in 2025–26, an increase of £90.4 billion on the previous financial year. Actual cash receipts were £937.8 billion.

These are staggering sums of money.

The British taxpayer is already funding a state of extraordinary size and cost. Households face income tax, National Insurance, VAT, council tax, fuel duties, stamp duties and a seemingly endless collection of other charges.

Businesses face corporation tax, employer National Insurance, business rates and a multitude of regulatory costs.

And what does the Government want to do with the next generation?

Teach them that the taxman is their friend.

There is a particularly uncomfortable irony in asking children to accept taxation as the price of civilisation while millions of working people are struggling with the cost of living and wondering why public services can still be so difficult to access despite the enormous sums being collected.

If the Government wants to win public confidence in taxation, perhaps it should start by demonstrating that it can spend the money competently.

That would be a far more convincing lesson than a cartoon about cavemen.

What happened to political impartiality?

There is another question that HMRC and the Government need to answer.

The Department for Education's own political impartiality guidance tells schools that political issues should be presented in a fair and dispassionate way, with a reasonable range of significantly different perspectives.

It also warns schools to review teaching materials carefully where they might promote partisan political views or undermine a balanced presentation.

That guidance is particularly relevant here.

Taxation is not simply an administrative subject. The appropriate level of taxation, the size of the state, the balance between public and private provision and the economic consequences of tax policy are all legitimate and often fiercely contested political questions.

HMRC is perfectly entitled to explain how taxes work.

It is perfectly entitled to explain that taxes fund public services.

But when its teaching materials repeatedly present taxation as an unquestionable social good, invite children to invent new taxes and omit meaningful discussion of the costs and consequences, serious questions arise about whether the material provides the balance children deserve.

HMRC should explain its approach and identify what safeguards are in place to ensure that its educational programme does not become an exercise in promoting the Government's preferred economic philosophy.

The state has form

This is not even the first time HMRC has attracted criticism over its approach to educating children.

Back in 2012, an earlier tax education module prompted controversy after pupils were reportedly encouraged to think about people in their local communities who might be avoiding tax.

Critics likened the exercise to encouraging children to spy on their neighbours.

Fourteen years later, the concern has evolved, but the underlying question remains: how far should a government department go in shaping children's attitudes towards taxation and the authority of the state?

The answer should be fairly obvious.

Teach children the facts. Explain the rules. Encourage questions. Allow them to challenge assumptions.

Do not turn the classroom into an extension of the tax department's communications strategy.

Teach children to think, not just to pay

Britain needs better financial education, not less of it.

Children should leave school understanding income tax, National Insurance, VAT, pensions, savings, mortgages, debt and the practical realities of running a business.

They should understand how wealth is created, why entrepreneurs take risks, how investment generates jobs and why economic growth matters.

They should also understand that government has an important role in society, but that its resources are finite and its decisions deserve scrutiny.

Most importantly, they should learn that taxation involves choices and trade-offs. There are legitimate arguments about how much the state should collect, how it should collect it and what it should spend the money on.

Those arguments should not be hidden from children simply because they might make the Treasury uncomfortable.

There is something profoundly wrong with a system in which an eight-year-old is taught that without taxation the world would collapse into a prehistoric nightmare, while the economic arguments against ever-higher taxes are nowhere to be found.

The Government should be encouraging children to become independent thinkers, not compliant little taxpayers.

If HMRC wants to produce an educational programme, perhaps its next video could explain why people work hard to earn money, why businesses create wealth, why governments sometimes waste it and why citizens should never be afraid to question how much of their money the state takes.

But perhaps that would be a lesson too far for the taxman.

The next generation deserves an education, not an HMRC sales pitch.

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

HMRC Records Are Private, Yet The Government Are Opening Them To Energy Companies!

2026-11-09T10:26:18.132+00:00

YOUR TAX RECORDS ARE PRIVATE. SO WHY IS THE GOVERNMENT OPENING THE DOOR TO ENERGY COMPANIES?

Your electricity supplier wants to know what you earn. The Government holds your tax records. And now the boundaries between the two are being redrawn.

There was a time when the relationship between you and your energy supplier was straightforward.

You used electricity and gas. They sent you a bill. You paid it.

Your energy company had no legitimate reason to know your annual income, your tax affairs, your pension arrangements or the financial details of your private life.

But apparently, those boundaries are now up for discussion.

The Government is pursuing arrangements for sharing information from public authorities, including HMRC, to help energy companies identify households for targeted support.

And this raises a fundamental question:

Whatever happened to the confidentiality of our tax records?

HMRC RECORDS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE PRIVATE. THAT IS THE LAW.

This is not simply about people feeling uncomfortable with their personal information being shared.

There is a very real legal principle at stake.

Under Section 18 of the Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005, HMRC officials are subject to a statutory duty of confidentiality.

The legislation places restrictions on the disclosure of information held by HMRC. It recognises that taxpayers provide the Government with highly personal financial information on the understanding that it will be protected and only disclosed where there is lawful authority.

Section 19 also provides for criminal sanctions for wrongful disclosure of identifiable taxpayer information.

In other words, taxpayer confidentiality is not some optional courtesy. It is a fundamental part of the legal framework governing HMRC.

So why are we now contemplating arrangements that could allow information from these confidential government records to be used in connection with private energy companies?

Yes, legislation can create specific legal gateways for information sharing. But the existence of a legal gateway does not mean that every proposed use of confidential information should automatically be accepted without scrutiny.

The question is whether this expansion is necessary, proportionate and properly protected.

And the public deserves a proper explanation.

YOUR TAX AFFAIRS ARE NONE OF YOUR ENERGY COMPANY'S BUSINESS

Think about what HMRC knows about you.

Your income. Your employment. Your tax position. Information relating to benefits and other financial circumstances.

Now consider why an energy supplier should need access to information derived from those records.

You didn't give your energy company permission to become an investigator of your financial circumstances when you signed up for gas and electricity.

You didn't agree to have your personal finances become part of a corporate assessment exercise.

And you certainly didn't expect the information you provide to HMRC to potentially find its way into arrangements involving private energy businesses.

The Government may argue that this is about identifying vulnerable households and targeting financial assistance.

But a worthwhile objective does not remove the need for strict limits on the information being shared.

What exactly will companies receive? Will they see individual financial records or simply an indication of eligibility? Who will have access? How long will information be retained? What happens if it is inaccurate?

These are basic questions, not unreasonable demands.

YOUR HOUSE MAY BE WORTH A FORTUNE. THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU ARE.

The inclusion of property valuation information raises another serious concern.

A property valuation tells us what a house might be worth. It does not tell us how much money its owner has in the bank.

Someone who bought a modest home 30 years ago may now own a property worth considerably more. But that doesn't mean they have a large pension, substantial savings or sufficient disposable income to absorb rising energy costs.

A home is not a cash machine.

A property valuation is not a measure of monthly affordability.

And the idea that someone's financial circumstances can be fairly assessed simply by looking at the estimated value of their home deserves considerable scrutiny.

What about pensioners? What about people on modest incomes? What about those who are asset-rich but cash-poor?

Will the system understand the difference between wealth on paper and money available to pay the bills?

WHERE DOES CONFIDENTIALITY END AND CORPORATE ACCESS BEGIN?

The wider concern is the gradual expansion of information sharing between government departments and private organisations.

HMRC holds information because it has a statutory responsibility to administer the tax system.

It is not a commercial database.

It is not a resource for businesses to exploit.

It contains information supplied by individuals who are legally required to provide accurate details of their financial affairs.

That relationship depends on confidentiality and public trust.

The Government itself acknowledges the importance of taxpayer confidentiality in its own published guidance.

So if the Government wants to expand the circumstances in which information can be disclosed, it must explain exactly why that is necessary and what safeguards will apply.

It is not enough to say that data sharing makes administration easier.

Convenience is not a sufficient justification for weakening important privacy boundaries.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE INFORMATION IS WRONG?

There is another problem that should not be overlooked.

Information held by government departments is not necessarily a complete or accurate picture of someone's current financial circumstances.

Records can be outdated. Circumstances change. Property valuations can be misleading. Income does not necessarily reflect disposable income.

If information is used to determine eligibility for energy support, or potentially to influence how households contribute towards a scheme, mistakes could have real financial consequences.

Who corrects those mistakes?

Who takes responsibility?

Will people know what information has been used to assess them?

And will they have a meaningful right to challenge decisions?

These questions must be answered before such arrangements become normalised.

THE GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO EXPLAIN ITSELF

The public deserves clear answers to some very straightforward questions:

Exactly what information will HMRC disclose?
Will energy companies receive identifiable individual tax information or only limited eligibility information?
What specific legal provisions authorise the disclosure?
Why is access to this information necessary?
Who within energy companies will be permitted to access it?
Will the information be stored, and for how long?
Can it be used for purposes other than administering the relevant support scheme?
What safeguards prevent onward sharing or misuse?
How can individuals find out what information has been shared about them?
What happens when the information is wrong?

Most importantly, why should people have to accept the expansion of corporate access to information they reasonably expect HMRC to keep confidential?

PRIVACY SHOULD NOT BE THE PRICE OF GETTING HELP WITH YOUR ENERGY BILL

Let's be absolutely clear.

Nobody is arguing against helping people who cannot afford to heat their homes.

Nobody is suggesting that vulnerable households should be abandoned.

But helping people and expanding access to their confidential financial information are two separate issues.

We can debate how energy support should be funded. We can debate eligibility. We can debate how best to identify households in need.

What we should not do is treat taxpayer confidentiality as an inconvenient obstacle to administrative efficiency.

HMRC's statutory duty of confidentiality exists for a reason. People should be able to provide information to the tax authorities without feeling that it could routinely become available to private businesses for purposes far removed from collecting tax.

There must be clear legal authority, strict limitations, meaningful oversight and genuine accountability.

Our tax records are private. Our financial circumstances are personal. And our homes are not open invitations for corporations to investigate our wealth.

The Government needs to remember that the information it holds does not belong to it in some unrestricted sense. It holds that information under specific legal responsibilities, including a duty to protect its confidentiality.

The public should not have to wonder whether paying their energy bill now comes with an expectation that their private financial lives are available for inspection.

If the Government believes these arrangements are justified, it should have no difficulty explaining them in full.

Because the public is entitled to ask one very simple question:

If HMRC is legally obliged to protect our tax information, why is the Government creating new routes for that information to be used by private energy companies?

And it deserves an answer.

This is a disaster waiting to happen, and waiting to be hacked!

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

MTD Bill Hits £1BN, and Still Rising!

2026-11-08T11:19:13.848+00:00

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Angela Rayner's 14-Year Threat to Hoteliers

2026-11-05T17:04:53.674+00:00

Angela Rayner's 14-Year Threat to Hoteliers: One Rule for Politicians, Another for Everyone Else?

Britain's hospitality businesses are being warned of potentially 14 years in prison for fraudulent evasion of a proposed visitor tax. Yet when Angela Rayner found herself at the centre of a £40,000 stamp duty controversy over her own £800,000 Hove flat, the outcome was very different. Is this really what equal accountability looks like?

There is something deeply uncomfortable about the Government's latest approach to Britain's hospitality industry.

Under proposals in the Visitor Levy Bill, accommodation providers could face a maximum prison sentence of 14 years for fraudulent evasion of the new tax.

Fourteen years!

At a time when independent hotels, guest houses, B&Bs and holiday accommodation providers are struggling with rising costs, increased taxation and mounting bureaucracy, the Government appears quite happy to reach for the most severe criminal penalties.

But perhaps before lecturing the hospitality industry about tax compliance, Angela Rayner should reflect on her own experience with HMRC.

A £40,000 stamp duty mistake on an £800,000 flat

In September 2025, Angela Rayner admitted that she had underpaid stamp duty on her £800,000 flat in Hove.

The issue centred on whether the property qualified as her only home or whether she should have paid the higher rate applicable to an additional property.

Rayner had paid approximately £30,000 in stamp duty when the correct amount was £70,000.

The £40,000 shortfall arose from the complicated ownership arrangements involving her former family home in Ashton-under-Lyne and a trust established for her disabled son.

Rayner initially relied on legal advice that she did not owe the additional stamp duty. Following further specialist tax advice, she acknowledged that the higher rate applied.

The controversy became sufficiently serious that she resigned as Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary in September 2025, after the independent ministerial standards adviser concluded that she had breached the Ministerial Code.

And what happened next?

In May 2026, HMRC concluded its investigation. It found that Rayner had not deliberately sought to avoid tax and had exercised reasonable care. She paid the outstanding £40,000 but received no penalty.

That is an important distinction: HMRC did not find her guilty of tax evasion. But the episode raises a legitimate question about the standards of accountability expected of those who make the laws governing everyone else.

Would an ordinary hotelier receive the same consideration?

This is the question that deserves asking.

Imagine an independent hotel owner facing a complicated new tax regime, making an error in calculating what is owed and subsequently discovering that the amount paid was incorrect.

Would that business owner receive the same level of consideration, access to specialist advice and opportunity to put matters right?

Or would they face an aggressive investigation, financial penalties and the prospect of criminal proceedings if deliberate fraud were suspected?

Of course, the proposed 14-year sentence relates to fraudulent evasion, not an innocent accounting mistake. But that does not remove the need to examine whether the legislation is proportionate and whether ordinary businesses will be adequately protected from overzealous enforcement.

The Government must not create a system in which small businesses feel that one compliance dispute could destroy everything they have worked for.

The hypocrisy question Angela Rayner cannot ignore

There is an obvious political problem here.

Angela Rayner has been at the centre of a major personal stamp duty controversy, acknowledged that the wrong amount had been paid and ultimately settled the additional tax.

She was also found to have breached the Ministerial Code over her handling of the matter.

Although HMRC subsequently cleared her of deliberate tax avoidance and carelessness, the public is entitled to question the apparent contrast between the treatment of a senior politician and the extraordinarily severe penalties now being proposed for the hospitality sector.

Politicians cannot expect the public to accept tough tax enforcement without also demanding transparency, proportionality and accountability from those in government.

It is not enough to say that the law must be obeyed. Those making the laws must demonstrate that they understand the consequences of getting tax matters wrong themselves.

Hospitality businesses deserve better

Britain's hospitality industry is not some bottomless source of Government revenue.

Independent hotels, guest houses and accommodation providers support local employment, tourism, suppliers and high streets. Many are family businesses that have spent decades building their livelihoods.

They are already dealing with rising operating costs, business rates, wages, energy bills and other tax obligations.

Now they face another proposed levy, backed by the prospect of a maximum 14-year prison sentence for fraudulent evasion.

The Government needs to explain why such an extraordinary maximum penalty is necessary, how it will distinguish deliberate fraud from genuine mistakes and what safeguards will protect small operators.

One standard of accountability, please

Nobody is suggesting that politicians should be immune from scrutiny. Equally, nobody is suggesting that deliberate tax fraud by hospitality businesses should be ignored.

But fairness must work both ways.

If the Government expects Britain's hoteliers to meet their tax obligations to the letter, it must also demonstrate that those in public office are held to high standards of responsibility and transparency.

Angela Rayner has had the opportunity to explain her own circumstances, correct the stamp duty shortfall and receive HMRC's final decision.

Hospitality businesses deserve a tax system that offers clarity, fairness and proportionate treatment too.

The question is not whether deliberate tax fraud should be punished. It should. The question is why the Government believes a potential 14-year prison sentence is an appropriate threat to attach to its new hospitality tax, and whether it has properly considered the impact on the very businesses it depends upon.

Perhaps before introducing more punitive legislation, the Government should remember that public trust is earned through consistency, not double standards.

Britain's hospitality industry deserves a fair deal. Not another tax, another threat and another lecture from Westminster.

HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

HMRC’s £4.4 Billion Customer Service Gamble

2026-10-31T16:27:21.453+00:00

HMRC’s £4.4 Billion Customer Service Gamble: Apparently, Even the Price Tag Needs an Upgrade

When a government department cannot tell us whether its new customer system will cost £1.7 billion or £4.4 billion, perhaps the first thing it needs to modernise is its approach to spending public money.

There are expensive IT projects. There are eye-wateringly expensive IT projects. And then there is HMRC’s new customer relationship management system, a project with an estimated whole-life cost somewhere between £1.7 billion and £4.4 billion.

Give or take £2.7 billion.

That is not a rounding error. It is not a minor fluctuation caused by the price of computer servers or an unexpected increase in the cost of software licences. It is a difference of £2,700,000,000 — enough money to make even the most seasoned taxpayer wonder whether somebody has accidentally included the national debt in the spreadsheet.

And this is the department responsible for collecting our taxes, scrutinising our finances and expecting ordinary people to account for every penny.

You could hardly invent a more appropriate example of the double standards that make public-sector spending so infuriating.

A budget with a £2.7 billion shrug

HMRC’s published business case puts the estimated cost of its Enterprise Customer Relationship Management programme at between £1.7 billion and £4.4 billion over 15 years, including VAT and an allowance for optimism bias. The department says the figures remain indicative and will be refined as procurement and planning progress.

Let that sink in.

The project is supposed to create a more joined-up customer service platform, replacing more than 70 legacy systems and helping HMRC manage interactions with millions of individuals and businesses.

That may be a worthwhile objective. Nobody seriously argues that a major tax authority should rely indefinitely on fragmented, ageing computer systems.

But how, exactly, does a modernisation project arrive at a price range spanning £2.7 billion?

If a private company presented its board with a business case saying a project might cost £1.7 billion or might cost £4.4 billion, it would reasonably expect some awkward questions. Investors would want to know what was driving the uncertainty, what assumptions underpinned the estimates and what safeguards existed against costs spiralling out of control.

At HMRC, the explanation is that the programme is complex, long-term and subject to uncertainties.

Of course it is complex. It is a major technology programme serving one of the world's largest tax administrations. That is precisely why robust planning, credible cost estimates and disciplined financial controls matter.

Complexity is a reason to demand better estimates, not a permanent excuse for uncertainty.

And optimism bias? Even the terminology deserves scrutiny. In government project planning, optimism bias is an allowance intended to account for the tendency to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits. It is a legitimate risk-management tool. But when the public is presented with a multibillion-pound range, it is entitled to ask how much of that range reflects genuine uncertainty, how much reflects risk allowances and how much could realistically be avoided through better delivery.

The taxpayer should not be expected to treat a £2.7 billion gap as a perfectly ordinary detail.

The department that demands precision from everyone else

There is something particularly galling about this coming from HMRC.

Miss a tax deadline and you may face a penalty. Submit the wrong figures and you may have to explain yourself. Make an error in your tax return and the consequences can follow you long after the original mistake.

HMRC's job is to administer a system in which financial accuracy matters. It expects businesses to maintain records, individuals to report income correctly and employers to operate payroll systems according to detailed rules.

Yet when it comes to one of its own flagship technology programmes, the estimated price can vary by billions.

The comparison is not that taxpayers and government departments face identical legal obligations. They do not. The comparison is about standards. The public is entitled to expect the same seriousness about accuracy, accountability and explaining the numbers from the institution demanding those things of everyone else.

There is no suggestion that HMRC has already spent £4.4 billion, or that the upper estimate is certain to materialise. This is a projected whole-life cost, not a bill already paid.

But that distinction does not make the question go away. It makes scrutiny more important, because the decisions made now will determine how much public money is committed over the years ahead.

If HMRC wants taxpayers to take its financial demands seriously, it should understand why taxpayers expect its own financial planning to withstand serious examination.

A better customer experience — eventually?

HMRC says the new platform will bring customer information together, help staff resolve queries more quickly and provide a more resilient and efficient service.

Fine. Those are sensible ambitions.

The trouble is that taxpayers have heard promises about better digital services and improved customer experiences before. A shiny new platform is not, by itself, proof of a better service.

The real test is brutally simple: can people get their tax questions answered without wasting hours trying to reach someone? Can businesses resolve problems before those problems disrupt their cash flow? Can advisers access reliable information? Can HMRC fix errors quickly and communicate clearly when something goes wrong?

A system that looks impressive in a procurement presentation but leaves customers trapped in the same old bureaucratic maze is not transformation. It is an expensive change of scenery.

And if the department spends billions building a new platform only to discover that its processes remain cumbersome, its information is poorly managed or its staff lack the tools and training to use the system effectively, the software will have solved only a fraction of the problem.

Technology can support better customer service. It cannot substitute for good management, clear processes and a genuine commitment to helping people resolve their problems.

The question is not whether HMRC deserves modern technology. It is whether HMRC can demonstrate that the technology it buys will deliver measurable improvements at a defensible cost.

The benefits need to be scrutinised as hard as the bill

HMRC's business case projects £815.1 million in increased yield and efficiencies over ten years. It also identifies projected savings of between £924 million and £1.25 billion over a 15-year contract period, with the latter figures subject to important assumptions and adjustments.

Those figures matter. They are part of the department's argument that the investment could deliver value for money.

But projected benefits are not the same as realised benefits.

There is a world of difference between forecasting savings in a business case and demonstrating that those savings have actually appeared in the accounts. There is also a difference between benefits directly attributable to a new system and benefits that depend on other transformation projects, changes in working practices or wider improvements across HMRC.

The department itself acknowledges that a significant proportion of the programme's wider value depends on subsequent transformation activity.

That creates an obvious accountability question: if the platform is delivered but the wider changes fail to materialise, who is responsible for the shortfall?

The public should not be left with an expensive system, a set of revised forecasts and an explanation that the promised benefits were always dependent on something else.

Every major milestone should have published performance measures. Every material change in forecast cost should be explained. And the department should report, in plain English, which savings have actually been delivered, which remain forecasts and which have been abandoned.

If the business case relies on benefits, those benefits must be measured. Otherwise, the business case risks becoming little more than a collection of optimistic assumptions wrapped around an enormous bill.

Fifteen years is a very long time to keep paying

The programme is designed to operate over a 15-year period, running from 2025–26 to 2040–41.

That is a substantial commitment across multiple spending reviews, changing economic conditions and potentially several changes of government.

Over such a long period, the risks are not confined to the initial procurement. Software licensing, integration, maintenance, migration, supplier dependence, changing requirements and future upgrades can all affect the eventual cost.

The longer the contract, the more important it becomes to establish clear exit arrangements, enforceable performance standards and realistic mechanisms for controlling costs.

There is also a basic question about supplier dependence. A platform intended to replace dozens of legacy systems may simplify HMRC's technology estate, but it must not simply exchange one form of complexity for a long-term reliance on a single supplier.

The public needs assurance that HMRC will retain control over its data, understand the cost of future changes and be able to challenge the supplier if performance or value for money deteriorates.

A 15-year technology relationship is not something to enter casually. Nor should it be treated as an excuse to defer accountability until the contract is well underway and the cost of changing direction has become prohibitive.

Who is accountable if the numbers rise?

HMRC says expenditure will be committed incrementally, with further approvals and value-for-money assessments as the programme develops. That is an important safeguard.

But safeguards are only meaningful if they lead to real consequences.

What happens if costs rise materially? What happens if the timetable slips? What happens if the promised improvements in customer service fail to materialise? What happens if the benefits are revised downwards while the costs continue upwards?

The public should not have to wait until the end of a 15-year programme to discover whether the original business case was credible.

There should be transparent reporting against the original baseline, independent scrutiny of major changes and clear explanations whenever a project moves materially away from its approved assumptions.

Parliament and taxpayers need to be able to distinguish between a justified change in scope and a programme losing control of its costs.

And there should be no convenient resetting of the baseline every time the figures become uncomfortable. If the original estimate changes, the original estimate should remain visible.

That is how accountability works: not by promising that everything will be fine, but by making it possible to establish what happened when it was not.

The real scandal would be learning nothing

To be fair, HMRC is not wrong to modernise its systems. Maintaining more than 70 legacy customer management systems indefinitely would bring its own costs, operational risks and potential failures. A properly delivered, well-governed programme could improve service, reduce duplication and make the department more efficient.

The case for investment is not the problem.

The problem is the scale of the uncertainty, the enormous sums involved and the need to demonstrate that the final outcome justifies the expense.

A sensible approach would mean publishing a clearer breakdown of the cost range, explaining the assumptions behind the lower and upper estimates, reporting the expected cost per stage and establishing firm measures of success before substantial further commitments are made.

It would also mean reporting actual customer outcomes, not simply counting systems replaced, contracts signed or digital features launched.

Because the ultimate measure of success is not whether HMRC acquires an impressive new technology platform. It is whether taxpayers receive a demonstrably better service without public money being squandered along the way.

Conclusion: taxpayers deserve more than a multibillion-pound question mark

HMRC's new customer system may eventually prove to be a worthwhile investment. It may replace ageing technology, improve staff productivity and make dealing with the tax authority less frustrating for millions of people.

But those outcomes must be demonstrated, not assumed.

For now, the department's published estimate leaves an uncomfortable question hanging over the entire exercise: how can the public have confidence in the financial discipline of a programme whose estimated whole-life cost ranges from £1.7 billion to £4.4 billion?

A difference of £2.7 billion is not a footnote. It is the sort of gap that demands a detailed explanation, rigorous oversight and a clear plan for controlling expenditure.

HMRC expects taxpayers to account for their money. It should expect no less of itself.

And if the department wants the public to believe that this multibillion-pound transformation represents value for money, it needs to do more than promise a better customer experience.

It needs to prove it.

Because when the bill could be £1.7 billion or £4.4 billion, the public is entitled to ask a very simple question: who, exactly, is keeping the receipts?

Sources and further reading

The cost figures cited above are estimates of the programme's whole-life costs over 15 years, including VAT and optimism bias. They are not a statement of expenditure already incurred.

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Two Tier Taxation

2026-10-29T12:52:32.256+00:00

Government employees get to Pay As You Earn, but the self employed will have to Pay In Advance.

#Budget2026

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Budget 2026 - HMRC's New Powers

2026-10-28T15:52:13.862+00:00

Stronger action against unpaid tax

HMRC will receive additional funding and stronger powers to recover overdue tax from people who can afford to pay but repeatedly fail to respond.

The government also intends to make it easier for taxpayers to settle smaller liabilities through more regular payments and changes to self-assessment.

For compliant taxpayers, this is not necessarily a new tax increase. Instead, the stated objective is to improve collection of taxes already due and reduce the gap between the amounts owed and the amounts received by the Exchequer.

The effectiveness of these measures will depend on how successfully HMRC implements them and how much additional revenue they ultimately generate.

The main new HMRC power announced in the UK Budget on 28 October 2026 is the ability to recover certain smaller unpaid tax debts directly from bank accounts, subject to safeguards. The Budget also includes more compliance officers and changes to how businesses pay and report tax.

Importantly, these measures do not all take effect immediately.

The main new powers and changes

Measure	What it means	When
Direct recovery of smaller tax debts	HMRC could collect qualifying unpaid tax in instalments directly from bank accounts of people and companies who can afford to pay but repeatedly fail to do so.	July 2029
Wider compliance workforce	HMRC will recruit another 670 compliance officers, on top of previous recruitment commitments.	By 2029–30
Updated information and inspection powers	HMRC will modernise the rules for requesting information and inspecting records, including records stored electronically.	Following Royal Assent to the relevant Finance Bill
Stronger debt collection	The government will invest an additional £70 million over five years in HMRC's debt-collection partnerships.	Over five years
Direct debit requirements	Businesses will need direct debit arrangements for VAT and PAYE liabilities, although they can use other payment methods before the specified cut-off date.	From April 2029
More regular self-assessment payments	Taxpayers already making payments on account will pay more regularly throughout the year, bringing payments closer to when income is earned.	From April 2029

What does direct recovery from bank accounts mean?

This is the measure most likely to attract attention.

HMRC already has powers to recover certain tax debts. The new measure is intended to extend direct recovery to lower-value debts, where a taxpayer has the means to pay but repeatedly fails to do so.

The government says it will develop a Code of Practice setting out safeguards and the operational framework before introducing the measure through future legislation.

It is therefore important not to interpret this as HMRC being given unrestricted permission to take money from anyone's bank account simply because a tax payment is late. The announced policy is targeted at persistent non-payment by people and companies able to pay.

What does this mean for businesses?

Companies should pay particular attention to three areas:

Cash flow: Direct recovery and more systematic debt collection could make unresolved tax arrears harder to leave outstanding.
Payment processes: The planned VAT and PAYE direct debit requirements mean businesses should review their payment arrangements ahead of April 2029.
Record keeping and compliance: Updated information powers, additional compliance officers and electronic invoicing requirements will increase the importance of accurate, accessible tax records.

The wider message is that HMRC is moving towards more systematic collection, better use of data and earlier identification of non-compliance.

Will HMRC have these powers immediately?

No. The direct recovery measure is planned for July 2029, and the government says safeguards will be developed before legislation is introduced. Other changes have their own implementation dates.

For taxpayers with genuine difficulties paying, it remains sensible to contact HMRC promptly to discuss payment arrangements rather than ignore a tax demand.

Bottom line: The Budget's direction is clear: HMRC is being equipped to identify unpaid tax more effectively and recover qualifying debts more efficiently. For compliant taxpayers, the practical priority is keeping records accurate, meeting deadlines and resolving discrepancies early.

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Happy Budget Day!

2026-10-28T10:28:51.095+00:00

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HMRC Withdraws Data Used by Nosferatu In Tomorrow's Budget

2026-10-27T16:36:14.322+00:00

HMRC has quietly withdrawn the data that is reportedly driving one of the Chancellor's key decisions tomorrow on taxing the wealthy. Hardly anyone seems to have noticed. 🧵 https://t.co/9LIlzdOwCB
— TaxWatch (@taxwatch) October 27, 2026

Does this mean the data is inaccurate, or does this mean that HMRC and Nosferatu don't want the taxpayers to see the data?

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HMRC's Fishing Trips

2026-10-25T11:33:33.311+00:00

🚨 IN FULL - HMRC letter to wealthy Britons : "I hope we can build an open and productive working relationship" 🤡 https://t.co/yXWfw27JXn
— Max (@banthebbc) October 25, 2026

HMRC cannot legally conduct unguided "fishing expeditions". For any formal information request to be valid, the details demanded must be "reasonably required" to check your tax position.

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Cri de Cœur

2026-10-23T16:17:53.076+01:00

That's funny because at my last strategy meeting with my accountant, they informed me I must use HMRC-recognised Making Tax Digital compatible software, creating an oligopoly for firms like Xero. I must now also report my company's income every three months rather than once a year, as well as a final report at year end. So I now have to pay for a Xero subscription. And pay my accountant more for the increased submissions. And fuck about with reconciling every three months, rather than once a year. For HMRC to end up with the same amount of income from me as before. Fuck off. Just fuck off. Fuck off all the way back to Yorkshire, then fuck off some more.
— Charles Archer (@that_stocks_guy) October 23, 2026

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HMRC, PCS and The 10% Pay Demand - Losing Touch With Reality

2026-10-13T17:16:27.092+01:00

HMRC, PCS and the 10% Pay Demand: Is the Civil Service Losing Touch with Reality?

A 10% pay rise. A four-day week. No loss of pay. At a time when taxpayers are under pressure and public finances remain stretched, PCS's demands raise a serious question: where does employee entitlement end and public service responsibility begin?

The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) is preparing for a major civil service dispute, with demands that include a 10% pay rise and a four-day working week without a reduction in salary.

And for HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), this is no distant Westminster squabble. PCS has members within the department, meaning a national dispute could have direct consequences for the people responsible for collecting taxes, tackling evasion and keeping essential services running.

The question is not whether civil servants deserve fair pay. Of course they do. The question is whether these particular demands are realistic, proportionate and defensible when measured against the economic pressures facing the country — and the expectations placed on those working in public service.

Ten per cent more pay. One day less work. Who picks up the bill?

Let's be blunt: demanding a 10% pay increase alongside a four-day working week with no loss of pay is an enormous ask.

A 10% rise is not a modest adjustment. It is a substantial increase in payroll costs. Introduce a shorter working week on top, and the government faces an even bigger challenge: maintaining service levels while potentially paying more for fewer contracted hours.

Someone must fund that arrangement. Ultimately, public spending comes from taxpayers, borrowing or money redirected from other priorities.

Those taxpayers include people whose own salaries have barely kept pace with the cost of living, employees who cannot simply decide to work one day less, and small businesses that must balance wage increases against the cost of keeping their doors open.

Why should the public sector automatically be entitled to a package that many private-sector workers could only dream of negotiating?

PCS will argue that pay has fallen behind inflation and that better conditions improve recruitment and retention. Those concerns deserve scrutiny. But they do not automatically justify a 10% award, let alone a simultaneous reduction in working hours without any reduction in salary.

Want more pay? Make the case. Want a four-day week? Prove it works. Demand both without demonstrating affordability or productivity gains, and the burden of justification becomes much harder to meet.

HMRC is not an ordinary employer

The implications for HMRC are particularly serious.

HMRC is responsible for collecting the revenue that pays for public services. Its employees deal with taxpayers, support businesses, investigate non-compliance and help ensure that the tax system operates effectively.

This is not work that can simply be switched off without consequences.

If industrial action affects operational teams, the potential results include longer customer waiting times, delayed casework, growing backlogs and disruption to compliance activity. The extent of any impact would depend on participation, the teams involved and the department's contingency plans.

That creates an uncomfortable contradiction.

The union is demanding more money and fewer working days from an organisation whose job is to secure the money that funds the country.

There is nothing inherently wrong with public servants seeking better conditions. But those demands must be considered alongside the service they are employed to deliver.

Public service is not just another transaction. It comes with responsibilities to the people who pay for it.

The four-day week: a right, or a reward to be earned?

A four-day week can work in some organisations. Where productivity improves, unnecessary work is removed or services can be redesigned, shorter hours may offer genuine benefits.

But it does not follow that every organisation can reduce working hours by 20% without compromising output or increasing costs.

HMRC is not one uniform workplace. Contact centres, compliance teams and specialist operational functions face different demands. Taxpayers cannot necessarily arrange their needs around a department-wide reduction in availability.

If employees work fewer hours, the department must explain how it will maintain service standards. Will existing staff deliver the same output in less time? Will processes become more efficient? Will technology make up the difference? Or will additional staff be required?

Each possibility has practical and financial consequences.

And if the answer is that productivity gains will cover the cost, where is the evidence? A demand of this scale should be supported by credible modelling, measurable targets and a convincing plan for protecting services.

Without that evidence, the four-day week risks looking less like a carefully designed productivity reform and more like a demand for improved terms without a sufficiently clear account of what the public receives in return.

The public-sector pay problem cannot be ignored — but neither can affordability

PCS has a case to make about pay, living costs, job security and working conditions. Those are legitimate subjects for negotiation.

However, there is a difference between arguing that employees deserve better remuneration and insisting that the taxpayer should fund a particular settlement regardless of the cost.

The government's pay framework exists because departments must operate within budgets. HMRC cannot simply increase its wage bill without considering the consequences for other spending, recruitment, investment and service delivery.

Nor should every pay dispute be reduced to a simplistic argument that public servants are overpaid. Many civil servants perform demanding work, and retaining experienced employees matters.

But the reverse is equally true: working for the state does not mean every pay demand is automatically reasonable.

A 10% rise combined with a four-day week without loss of pay requires a robust justification. It should not be treated as an entitlement merely because a union has put it on the negotiating table.

The same principle applies to industrial action. Employees have lawful rights to organise and take action, subject to the relevant legal requirements. But exercising those rights can still have consequences for the public, particularly when essential government services are affected.

Why HMRC should be concerned now

The proposed national ballot makes this more than an abstract argument. The planned ballot period is 20 October to 1 December 2026, subject to the necessary statutory requirements. A ballot does not itself mean strikes will happen, but it brings the prospect of disruption into sharper focus.

HMRC management must consider the potential impact on customer service, operational capacity and staff relations. It also needs to recognise that a prolonged dispute can create costs of its own through lost working time, recovery efforts and damaged trust.

There is a wider strategic question, too: what happens if employees and management become locked into a cycle of escalating demands and increasingly entrenched positions?

A sustainable outcome requires more than slogans. It requires an honest assessment of what the department can afford, what employees reasonably need and what service taxpayers should expect.

That means challenging unrealistic proposals where necessary, while being equally prepared to address genuine problems with pay, workloads and working conditions.

Neither side should be exempt from scrutiny.

The bottom line: demands are easy; paying for them is harder

PCS is entitled to campaign for its members. But the public is entitled to ask whether a 10% pay rise and a four-day week without loss of pay represent a reasonable use of public money.

Those are substantial demands, and the union should be expected to demonstrate how they can be delivered without undermining HMRC's capacity to serve taxpayers.

A shorter working week might have a place in a modern civil service. Higher pay may be justified in particular circumstances. But combining the two on a national scale, without clear evidence of affordability and productivity gains, is a different proposition altogether.

HMRC cannot lose sight of its central purpose. Its job is to collect the money that keeps the country running, not to become a test case for employment demands that have not been properly costed or operationally justified.

Fair pay is a legitimate objective. A blank cheque is not. And a four-day week cannot simply be declared affordable because it is popular with those asking for it.

The question PCS must answer is simple: if taxpayers are expected to pay more while receiving fewer contracted working hours, what concrete improvements will they get in return?

Until that question has a convincing answer, the union's demands will remain open to a fundamental challenge — not because civil servants should accept poor conditions, but because public money comes with public responsibilities.

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HMRC Trainee Wins £16,000 - Tribunal Finds ‘Kill Russians’ Allegations Were Invented

2026-10-02T16:13:17.935+01:00

An HMRC trainee has been awarded more than £16,000 in compensation after an employment tribunal found that serious allegations made against her were fabricated.

The trainee, known as Ms X, had been accused of saying she wanted to use her position at HMRC to “kill Russians for killing her family”.

But the tribunal heard that she never made the comments attributed to her.

Instead, the judge found that her line manager had invented the allegations and made false notes about a private meeting with the trainee.

Ms X, originally from Abkhazia in Georgia, speaks English with a Russian accent. She was granted asylum in the UK in 2004 and subsequently became a British citizen.

The case raises questions about the importance of accurate records, proper management procedures and fairness when serious allegations are made in the workplace.

I have to say, I didn't have "kill Russians" on my HMRC bingo card!

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HMRC’s Inability To Part With Capgem

2026-09-29T16:59:09.148+01:00

There is something profoundly dispiriting about a government department promising to break up an old outsourcing relationship, and then continuing to hand the same supplier billions of pounds.

That is the uncomfortable lesson from HM Revenue & Customs and Capgemini.

The figures are extraordinary. Research by The Register, using HMRC's own published transaction data, found that the tax authority paid Capgemini at least £4.2 billion across 15,726 transactions between 2014 and July 2026. Sixteen months of data are missing, meaning the true figure could be higher.

And this is not simply an argument about one contract. It is about the ability of the state to learn from its own experience.

HMRC's original Aspire outsourcing arrangement with Capgemini began in 2004. It was supposed to be a ten-year deal. Instead, it became a sprawling technological dependency. By the time Aspire was due to end in 2017, the National Audit Office estimated that HMRC would have spent £10.4 billion, against the £4.1 billion figure used when Capgemini's bid was evaluated. The NAO said HMRC had not market-tested significant elements of the arrangement and that benchmarking indicated it had paid above-market prices for some work.

The lesson appeared obvious: disentangle the department from the contractor, bring greater control in-house, diversify suppliers and make future contracts shorter and more flexible.

HMRC itself said precisely that.

Its 2015-16 annual report described a phased exit from Aspire, with more development and delivery brought under HMRC's direct control. It said this would provide greater flexibility and control over its digital strategy.

Yet the divorce has proved remarkably amicable.

Capgemini continued to win lucrative work supporting systems associated with its former empire. In 2022, HMRC awarded it a £51 million contract for tax-system support. It subsequently received a deal worth up to £214 million for maintaining legacy applications, followed by a contract worth up to £245.5 million in 2024. A separate five-year agreement to operate two major tax platforms runs to 2029 and is valued at between £403 million and £574 million.

Then came the latest twist. In 2026, Capgemini won HMRC's contact-centre contract, worth up to £500 million, with a basic term running to 2034 and extensions capable of taking it to 2036. The official procurement notice confirms the two possible one-year extensions.

So much for breaking up!

HMRC is entitled to say that these are new procurements, not simply Aspire being quietly extended through the back door. It says its awards comply with procurement law and that it has moved from a handful of large legacy contracts towards a more diverse supplier base.

That defence may be legally correct. It does not make the broader picture any less troubling.

The central question is not whether every individual contract was technically lawful. It is whether the taxpayer has escaped the dependency that HMRC itself identified as a problem.

There is a particularly revealing example. In 2022, HMRC awarded Capgemini a contract without prior publication, arguing that, for technical reasons, only Capgemini could provide the required services and that there was no reasonable alternative. The official procurement notice says those services were necessary to maintain business-critical systems while they were replaced, modernised or decommissioned.

That is precisely how technological dependency perpetuates itself.

The incumbent built the system. The incumbent understands the system. The incumbent is then needed to keep the system running while the government replaces it. The replacement takes time. The government cannot risk disrupting the tax system. Another contract follows.

Repeat.

This is not an argument for pretending that government can simply rip out complex computer systems overnight. HMRC collects hundreds of billions of pounds in tax and the NAO acknowledged that Aspire provided continuity of service with few significant failures.

But that is precisely why the department should have been so determined to avoid recreating the dependency.

There is also a wider political embarrassment here. Ministers increasingly talk about using the enormous purchasing power of the state to support British businesses. Yet one of the government's biggest technology purchasers remains deeply reliant on a multinational supplier whose relationship with the tax authority stretches back more than two decades.

The issue is not that Capgemini is foreign. Nor should nationality become a substitute for value, competence or competition.

The issue is choice.

A government department should be able to say: this is our system, this is our data, these are our skills, and here are several suppliers capable of competing for the work.

It should not repeatedly find itself saying: this system is too complicated, too important or too dependent on its incumbent supplier for anyone else to take over.

That is the real scandal here; not that Capgemini keeps winning contracts, but that HMRC appears to have found it extraordinarily difficult to make itself genuinely independent of one.

The taxpayer deserves better than an outsourcing relationship that refuses to die.

And if ministers really mean what they say about competition, resilience, British capability and better value from public procurement, HMRC should be among the first departments required to demonstrate exactly how it intends to end this cycle.

Because a contract that was supposed to end in 2017, yet leaves its incumbent potentially embedded until 2036, is not much of a break-up.

It is a very expensive long-distance relationship.

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HMRC Steps Up Scrutiny of UK Billionaires with Dedicated Compliance Managers

2026-09-22T16:33:17.913+01:00

HMRC has assigned a personal compliance manager to every billionaire within its reach, in a significant tightening of oversight on the super-rich.

According to reports from mid-to-late September 2026, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has refreshed its list of billionaires to cover all those with a UK tax footprint, not only those who file personal tax returns in Britain. The move draws on HMRC data, public information, and data shared by other countries. It follows criticism from the National Audit Office and a parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, which previously highlighted gaps in HMRC’s understanding of billionaires’ affairs and noted that allocation of managers had been risk-based rather than purely wealth-based.

Customer Compliance Managers (CCMs) are senior tax professionals who act as a single point of contact. They develop a detailed picture of an individual’s finances, behaviours, and risks, review returns with intelligence from UK and international sources, and challenge underpayments through compliance checks. HMRC already used CCMs for the most complex or high-risk wealthy taxpayers (roughly 15,000 people, or about 2% of its broader “wealthy” population of those with incomes of £200,000+ or assets of £2 million+). Extending this systematically to all identified billionaires marks a clear shift.

An HMRC spokesperson stated: “We want to help all customers get their tax right, including the UK’s wealthiest people. We’ve had dedicated customer compliance managers for wealthy individuals for several years, allowing us to identify and address tax risks effectively.”

The change aims to improve grip on complex, often international structures used by the ultra-wealthy and close gaps in the tax collected from this group. Wealthy individuals as a whole already contribute a large share of personal tax receipts, but previous reviews found incomplete coverage of the very richest. This dedicated approach is expected to help ensure more accurate compliance going forward.

Given the exodus from the UK, these new roles may not be that secure!

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HMRC’s Four Day Week Bonanza

2026-09-18T12:06:49.262+01:00

Nearly one in ten of HMRC’s most senior staff have stopped turning up on Fridays, as the taxman’s four-day week perk has exploded while taxpayers continue to wait for answers.

Figures released to Guido’s FOI Unit show that, as of 31 July this year, 9.1% of Grade 6 officials and 9.0% of Senior Civil Servants at HMRC were working compressed hours over a four-day week.

And the perk is growing fast.

In June 2024, 1,542 full-time HMRC staff were on a compressed four-day week. By July this year, that had risen to 2,267, a 47% increase in just two years.

Among the senior ranks, the growth is even more striking. The number of Grade 6 officials on compressed hours jumped 64%, while Grade 7 numbers rose 55%. The Senior Civil Service figure increased by 37.5%.

This is overwhelmingly a management phenomenon. The numbers at the bottom of the organisation have barely shifted: Assistant Officers and Administrative Assistants on four-day compressed hours remain at around 1%.

So while the junior staff keep the machinery running, an ever-growing slice of the management ranks are squeezing the working week into four days.

The obvious question is whether taxpayers are getting an equivalent service in return.

A Cabinet Office source told Guido: “It’s often the case that staff working on compressed hours do less work overall because of the way their weekday structure changes.”

HMRC insists that isn't happening, claiming employees on compressed hours “receive no reduction in expected workload, performance standards or accountability”.

There is, however, a rather awkward problem with that assurance: HMRC cannot produce the evidence to demonstrate that the arrangement has no effect on productivity or service delivery.

Asked for any internal review of the impact on productivity, output or customer service, HMRC confirmed that it “does not hold a central assessment, review or monitoring report”.

In other words, the taxman is expanding a working arrangement across thousands of staff, including a significant and growing proportion of its senior officials, without centrally monitoring whether it actually works.

Worse still, HMRC cannot even say how many applications for compressed hours it rejects, because there is no central record of applications.

That makes it rather difficult for taxpayers to know whether this is a carefully managed workforce policy or simply another benefit being handed out with remarkably little scrutiny.

And the backdrop is hardly one of flawless performance.

HMRC's own 2024/25 accounts show that just 76.9% of customer correspondence was dealt with within 15 working days, below its own 80% service standard. At the end of March 2025, 2.29 million items of correspondence were still on hand. HMRC also managed to answer only 71.5% of callers seeking an adviser, against an 85% target.

Yet at the same time as taxpayers were waiting for the taxman to answer their correspondence, HMRC was expanding a system under which staff can work their hours across four days instead of five.

The internal guidance says employees on compressed hours work 9 hours and 15 minutes across four days, rather than 7.4 hours across five. Arrangements can last for up to five years before staff have to reapply.

Temporary arrangements can be approved by a line manager without formal HMRC involvement, while the policy itself acknowledges that such arrangements can cover periods when “not all duties of your role are fulfilled”.

And then there is the rather generous interaction with home working.

Compressed hours sit alongside HMRC's two-days-a-week home-working arrangements, meaning a Grade 6 employee could potentially be physically in an HMRC office for just two days a week — while enjoying a three-day weekend.

Bank holidays are handled with a distinctly relaxed approach too: staff are told that their entitlement is not calculated automatically and that they must “keep a manual record”.

HMRC's wider policy document says it “believe[s] that flexible working can promote work-life balance and improve wellbeing and performance”.

That may be true for employees.

But for the taxpayer, the more important question is whether flexibility for HMRC staff is being matched by flexibility, speed and competence for the people who actually fund the organisation.

HMRC's own figures suggest there is still plenty of room for improvement. The department says customer service is getting better, but its correspondence performance remains below target, with millions of pieces of correspondence still being handled and hundreds of thousands missing the 15 day standard.

Before HMRC congratulates itself on the wonders of flexible working, perhaps it should first demonstrate that the taxpayer isn't the one paying for it!

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Hypocritical Wankers!

2026-09-13T11:58:42.930+01:00

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Blinkin' Flip!

2026-09-08T11:07:15.108+01:00

A former tax worker who described himself as "the ultimate genocidal racist monster" has been jailed for inciting hatred online after he was exposed by a BBC investigation.

Thomas Webster was sacked by HMRC and investigated by police after comments he made to an undercover journalist in the BBC programme 'Unmasked: Extreme Far Right'.

Webster, 29, from Lapworth, Warwickshire, admitted 10 counts of stirring up racial hatred online, including ones calling for the killing and extinction of his racial "enemies".

Webster also admitted to stirring up religious hatred and another count of stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. He was sentenced to two years at Warwick Crown Court.

In his online posts, Webster said he wanted Jewish and gay people to be tortured and executed.

Webster also said he wanted to kill all Muslims until they were "globally extinct".

In one instance, he said if a migrant hotel was placed on his road he would "prepare for murder and prison time, I am serious".

Webster was a member of the far-right group Patriotic Alternative when a BBC Wales Investigates' undercover reporter secretly recorded him at two of the group's events in 2024.

He was filmed saying that in his job at HMRC he liked to "deliberately" give non-white people "bad information which sounds interesting, like I'm deliberately trying to sabotage them".

Webster was dismissed by HMRC in February 2025, a month after the programme was broadcast.

The HMRC said it took breaches of its standards "extremely seriously" and had "robust processes" in place to investigate concerns.

"Where standards are not met, we act decisively," HMRC said in a statement.

"Following an internal disciplinary process, the individual concerned was dismissed from HMRC and ceased to be employed by the department in February 2025."

Talking to an undercover BBC reporter, Webster self-identified as a "white totalitarianist" who believed in "a world where white becomes the default human race... all other races will be extinct."

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How To Spot Money Laundering - Lesson 1

2026-08-31T11:56:45.325+01:00

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£30 Off Your Tax Bill For 30 Minute Call Delay

2026-08-29T16:05:50.364+01:00

People on hold to HMRC for more than 30 minutes would get £30 off their tax bill under a Reform UK government, Robert Jenrick has announced.

Reform's economy spokesman said HMRC's treatment of taxpayers was "offensive to working people" and his party would tie the pay of senior HMRC officials to customer service targets.

To prevent abuse, the tax credit for phone delays would be limited to two occasions in a given tax year, Jenrick said.

In January 2025, the Public Accounts committee accused HMRC of seeking to "degrade its telephone service to drive taxpayers to digital channels" in a highly critical report., external

The MPs' report said nearly 44,000 customers were cut off without warning after being on hold for more than an hour in 2024 and "HMRC's treatment of taxpayers has damaged trust in the tax system".

Additionally, the pay of senior HMRC officials will be linked to their customer service performance.

It would be interesting to see if this policy, if Reform win the next election and actually implement it, would have any meaningful impact on the call handling performance of HMRC.

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HMRC's Army of Home Inspectors

2026-08-24T11:35:43.845+01:00

HMRC has hired an army of almost 500 new valuation agents to snoop on homes.

The Valuation Office Agency’s annual report up to the end of March showed that staff costs had risen by £31.5 million and the total Full Time Equivalent staff number has risen by 493, a ten-times increase in the hiring rate on the year before. The agency is being merged with HMRC. It said:

“The rise in staff costs is primarily due to our pay award, and an increase in agency staff costs of approximately £12 million to support performance recovery and data enhancement work to improve our Council Tax data quality.”

The agents will be able to demand entry to homes for “internal inspections” to determine whether they are worth over £2 million and will therefore have to pay Reeves’ so-called Mansion Tax. If you don’t let them in you will get a £200 fine or worse.

However, it is not as simple as that (irrespective of the fine) the current law does not give HMRC the right to enter your property to poke around in order to try and find evidence to hike the valuation for your Labour's new so-called 'High Value Council Tax Surcharge.'

Currently HMRC can ask the occupier to agree a time for an inspection but if the occupier refuses to agree, HMRC has to apply to the First-tier Tribunal for approval.

The occupier can object to the inspection on reasonable grounds for example that the inspection is not reasonably necessary; the proposed intrusion is disproportionate to the tax issue at stake; HMRC has not identified what an internal inspection would actually establish; adequate substitute evidence has been offered, or HMRC's proposed inspection is speculative or a fishing exercise.

These legal rights are a significant practical obstacle to Labour's 'mansion tax.' A system involving hundreds of thousands of valuations could scarcely make an individual First-tier Tribunal application every time an owner refused access without creating a substantial administrative burden.

Additionally, in the event a tax surcharge is made on a property, if that property is then sold for less than £2M the taxpayer can request a refund. IHT refunds are already an administrative nightmare, imagine the chaos of Burnham's mansion tax!

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HMRC Call Waiting Times and Letter Response Times

2026-08-23T11:12:48.754+01:00

I asked Claude to present me with the statistics about HMRC's customer service standards over the last 5 years wrt call answering times and letter response times.

Here is its response:

"Here's the trend for HMRC's two biggest phone lines over the last five years. Both got dramatically worse until 2022-24, then started improving — though not at the same pace.

Call answer times (minutes:seconds)

Year	Self Assessment helpline	Employers helpline
2020-21	15:12	09:07
2021-22	17:07	12:03
2022-23	25:14	16:03
2023-24	37:15	22:20
2024-25	23:40	26:32

The Self Assessment line peaked at over 37 minutes in 2023-24 (the year the Public Accounts Committee accused HMRC of deliberately degrading phone service to push people online) before improving to 23:40 in 2024-25. The Employers line went the other way — it kept getting worse into 2024-25, largely because of industrial action from December 2024 to June 2025. Overall call-answering rate (percentage of adviser attempts handled) was 71.5% in 2024-25 against an 85% target; it's since climbed to around 83–84% for April–September 2025.

Letter/correspondence response times (% answered within 15 working days, target 80%)

Year	% within 15 days
2020-21	Below target (pandemic-era decline)
2021-22	45.5%
2022-23	73%
2023-24	76%
2024-25	76.9%
Q1 2025-26 (Apr–Jun)	69.5% (dip — staff pulled onto phones for the Self Assessment peak)
Q2 2025-26 (Jul–Sep)	78.9%, improving to 87% by quarter end

Post has consistently missed its 80% target every year for the last five years. The lowest point was 2021-22, during the pandemic backlog, when fewer than half of letters got a reply within 15 days.

The bigger picture: the National Audit Office found taxpayers collectively spent 798 years on hold in 2022-23 and 558 years in 2024-25 — an improvement, but still enormous. HMRC received £51m in extra funding in May 2024 and a further £500m from the 2025 Spending Review, aimed at getting 90% of customer interactions to self-service/digital channels by 2029-30 (currently around 70-80%, depending on the quarter). Both call answering and 15-day correspondence figures remain below HMRC's own targets as of the latest published data (Q2 2025-26)."

I queried the letter response figures:

"Good instinct to question that — the "% within 15 working days" figure hides a lot. Let me dig into the actual average/median wait, not just the target-hit rate.You're right to push on that — and the "76.9% within 15 days" headline is misleading in an important way.

That statistic is a blended figure across simple correspondence — the bulk of what HMRC receives is straightforward stuff (change of address, simple claims, acknowledgements) that genuinely can be turned around fast. It's not representative of complex cases.

For anything more involved, the picture is very different:

HMRC runs an official "check when you can expect a reply" tool that individuals can use to see expected wait times for specific types of query. One RSM UK review found the tool showing a response time of 203 days (29 weeks) for online applications and letters requesting repayment, and 147 days (21 weeks) for paper returns.
Accountants and agents routinely report enquiry cases, complex repayment disputes, and non-standard correspondence taking 3–10+ months, based on forum and professional-body accounts — well beyond the "average" 15-day figure.
HMRC's own internal guidance sets separate targets for dealing with correspondence within both 15 and 40 working days, and instructs staff to send an interim acknowledgement — rather than a full reply — when the 15-day target can't be met. That acknowledgement can itself count toward "responding," while the substantive reply comes much later.

So the two things you've heard are both true and not really in conflict: the headline stat (which drives the target) covers the mass of simple, quickly-resolved post; the "several months" experience is what happens once your letter falls into a queue for anything requiring actual casework — enquiries, disputes, complex repayments.

HMRC doesn't publish a clean average/median turnaround time across all correspondence types in its regular statistics, which is part of why the gap between the headline % and lived experience is so wide. If you want, I can dig further into whether there's a published median/mean figure (rather than just % hitting the 15-day target) for a specific type of correspondence you're dealing with."

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Timing Is The Key To Successful Tax Planning

2026-08-20T12:48:01.606+01:00

Good to see Harry and Meghan achieve 6 full tax years of non-UK residency to manage the “temporary non-resident” rules for capital gains tax 😬

They have clearly had some good tax advice and the timing of their move back to the UK is immaculate 👌https://t.co/a8koinBHLK
— Nimesh Shah (@nimshah14) August 20, 2026

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Heads Up HMRC!

2026-08-17T16:12:00.708+01:00

I know you let Rayner off, but still have a looksy eh?

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HMRC's Four Day Week

2026-08-15T16:48:05.527+01:00

HMRC’s Whitehall HQ Barely a Fifth Full on Fridays – While They Demand You File On Time And Answer Every Letter

Whilst we are still stuck in the real world of Monday-to-Friday graft answering HMRC’s endless demands, their own staff treat Fridays like a national holiday.

New figures obtained by Guido Fawkes’ FOI Unit reveal the glorious reality of HMRC’s flagship headquarters at 100 Parliament Street. On working Fridays between April 2025 and March 2026, the place was barely a fifth full. Average Monday-to-Thursday attendance was 358 people. On Fridays it plunged roughly 43% lower. The best Friday of the entire year managed just 264 bodies — still well below a normal weekday.

HMRC helpfully reduced desk capacity from 516 to 391 in 2025. Even with fewer desks, Monday-to-Thursday attendance averaged a respectable 89%. Fridays? A pathetic 50%. Half the desks empty. Taxmen sticking their feet up, doing the laundry, or working from the sofa while the rest of us keep the economy going.

And yet the official line remains pure gold: “We expect all office-based colleagues to spend at least 60% of their working time in an HMRC office.” Hybrid working, they claim, helps them “attract and retain the talent we need to deliver for our customers.”

Deliver for customers?

The same customers who wait an hour on hold, get hung up on deadline day, wait years for refunds, and face quarterly MTD reporting while HMRC’s own office stands half-empty every Friday?

This is the department that lectures the self-employed about digital record-keeping, demands perfect compliance, and sends debt collectors after pensioners for £47. Meanwhile their own staff treat Fridays as optional and the building looks like a ghost town.

Four-day week creeping in by the back door? Looks that way. Just don’t expect any four-day week for the rest of us when the next brown envelope arrives.

Tax does have to be taxing.

But when HMRC’s own flagship HQ is barely a fifth full on Fridays while they insist on 60% attendance and still can’t deliver basic service? That’s not taxing — that’s institutional hypocrisy with empty desks as the evidence.

Work from home on Fridays by all means, lads. Just stop pretending you’re delivering world-class customer service while the lights are off.

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