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Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102945041
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
Each year up to 10 million taxpayers contact the HM Revenue and Customs for help with their tax affairs and the Department spends £35 million on producing and distributing printed information and £55 million dealing with contacts. This report looks at the type of communication between the Department and the individual taxpayer whether forms and guidance are easy to obtain, easy to understand, accurate and comprehensive. The potential benefits and savings in making services more responsive to customer needs have previously been highlighted and the Department has already instituted some changes, with more being planned. This report contains recommendations to continue this process.
Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102945041
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
Each year up to 10 million taxpayers contact the HM Revenue and Customs for help with their tax affairs and the Department spends £35 million on producing and distributing printed information and £55 million dealing with contacts. This report looks at the type of communication between the Department and the individual taxpayer whether forms and guidance are easy to obtain, easy to understand, accurate and comprehensive. The potential benefits and savings in making services more responsive to customer needs have previously been highlighted and the Department has already instituted some changes, with more being planned. This report contains recommendations to continue this process.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215520432
Category : Income tax
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
Helping people to provide accurate information about their tax affairs is essential if they are to pay the right amount of tax. Accurate and timely information also helps to reduce the cost to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) of seeking information or correcting errors. HMRC spends £35 million a year on producing and distributing printed forms and other guidance, and £55 million a year answering 12.5 million enquiries on how to complete forms through 13 telephone helplines, face to face meetings at 279 enquiry centres or via its website. It handles over 20 million telephone calls a year from taxpayers. Its performance in answering telephone calls has improved with 72 per cent of calls answered within 20 seconds in 2006-07, compared with 45 per cent in 2005-06. But it is still below the general industry benchmark of 80 per cent. HMRC is encouraging people to use the most cost-effective method of contact that meets their needs. Improving its forms and guidance, as well as its website, should reduce avoidable calls. It estimates that it could save over £100 million by encouraging more people to use its website and online services. It is estimated that 3.3 million taxpayers filing Income Tax Self Assessment returns understated their tax by £2.8 billion in the 2001-02 tax year. Of this, around £330 million arose from unintentional mistakes by taxpayers. HMRC provides accurate and complete advice in 95 per cent of telephone enquiries. But taxpayers sometimes receive inaccurate or incomplete advice because more complicated enquiries are not always referred to expert staff.
Author: Great Britain: National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102951592
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 66
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Book Description
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme provides compensation to victims of violent crime. In 2006-07, the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (the Authority), which covers England, Scotland and Wales, received 61,000 applications and paid some £192 million to victims. Awards are determined by a tariff, with fixed compensation for each type of injury. Dissatisfied applicants can apply to the Authority for a review of their case and, if they remain dissatisfied, can appeal to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Appeals Panel (the Panel), which received 2,136 appeals in 2006-07. In 2006-07, the Authority's administrative costs were £23.6 million, and the Panel's £4.9 million. This report examines whether the Authority and Panel provide a more cost effective and better quality of service than when last investigated in 2000. The report finds the Authority's service has declined, and it has not met its targets. The average time to resolve a tariff case has increased from 364 days in 1998-99 to 515 days in 2006-07. There were 81,600 unresolved cases at the Authority and 2,400 at the Panel in October 2007. Half of the applications are rejected as ineligible, and these need to be identified much earlier in the assessment process. The Authority has recently initiated a major reform programme, and has diagnosed problems with current ways of working - too bureaucratic and repetitive - and early signs are that the changes are bringing improvements. The NAO makes a number of recommendations for further improving the service to victims and on improving the efficiency of case processing and management of the caseload.
Author: United States. Internal Revenue Service
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Income tax
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Public Accounts Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215525482
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
The NAO report on this topic published as HCP 481, session 2007-08 (ISBN 9780102954159)
Author: Great Britain. National Audit Office
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780102963403
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
In 2008-09 HM Revenue and Customs' Customer Contact Directorate, which answers 95 per cent of calls to the Department's contact centres, only answered 57 per cent of 103 million call attempts, compared with 71 per cent in the year before and an industry benchmark of over 90 per cent.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215521576
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 52
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Book Description
Benefit fraud is a crime and undermines public confidence in the benefits system. In 2006-07, the Department for Work and Pensions estimated that it spent some £154 million on tackling fraud, identifying £106 million of overpaid benefit, against total benefit expenditure of £120 billion. The Department estimates that fraud fell from £2 billion in 2001-02 to £800 million in 2006-07, which is 0.6% of benefit expenditure. But the Department must do more to reverse the rise in official and customer error. Estimated error rose from £1 billion in 2001-02 to £1.9 billion in 2006-07. Benefit complexity is believed to be a major cause of error. Increasing the volume of pre-payment checks and encouraging customers to receive benefit payments directly into their bank accounts has prevented some fraud. The Department now works closely with the police, the Serious Organised Crime Agency and local authorities to prevent, identify and act against fraud. But it could make more effective use of its powers and resources. While the Department successfully prosecutes 90 per cent of the cases it takes to court, the Prosecution Division has lost 17 per cent of its staff since 2003. Debt recovery is an essential part of tackling fraud, yet in 2006-07 the Department only recovered £22 million of fraud debt out of a known fraud debt stock of £339 million. The Department has been slow to improve its management information systems, hampering its ability to measure the cost-effectiveness of counter-fraud activities. It has taken from 2003 until February 2008 to roll out a new national management information system, known as FRAIMS, at a cost of £65 million.
Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Public Administration Select Committee
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215520708
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 144
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Book Description
This report considers the case for Parliament to be able to initiate and conduct inquiries into serious and significant matters of public concern. It takes up the recommendationmade by this committiee's predecessor Committee (in the Government by Inquiry Report) that there should be a parliamentary mechanism for initiating inquiries. These would take the form of Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry, composed of parliamentarians and others. In the Report, the committee examines the justification for creating Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry in particular, that they would enable Parliament to hold the Executive to account more effectively. Then it covers some of the practical issues involved in setting up inquiries of this nature: how Parliament could instigate an inquiry, its composition, and its operation and powers. The committee concludes that it is crucial, in constitutional sense, that Parliament has the necessary powers and abilities to scrutinise the Executive and hold it to account. Proper parliamentary scrutiny should include the ability to establish and undertake inquiries into significant matters of public concern. Parliament has, in the past, conducted investigationsof this kind and as the great forum of the nation, should be expected to do so. The committee's recommendation for Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry would promoteeffective parliamentary accountability by creating a process for Parliament to initiate inquirieswhere it rather than the Executive sees fit.
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215523532
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
In 2007-08, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (the Department) received £3,617 million from the Treasury. The Accounting Officer is expected to manage these resources efficiently and effectively to deliver a range of services and operations within the funding provided by Parliament. The Department failed to allocate final budgets to each of its business areas until five months into the 2007-08 financial year because: (a) planned expenditure was in excess of funds provided; (b) budget holders did not declare all financial commitments from the outset; and (c) the costs of unforeseen floods and the outbreaks of animal disease had to be managed. A similar situation had arisen in 2006-07 when the Department had to make mid-year budget reductions of £170 million to avoid the risk of overspending. The late notification of the reductions had an adverse impact on performance. In part the problems arise from the difficulties faced in sponsoring 31 delivery bodies, each with its own administrative functions and with different approaches to setting budgets and monitoring progress. Obtaining timely and realistic financial reports from delivery bodies was also difficult. A lack of awareness amongst the Department's Board Members of good financial management practice, together with cultural issues which did not prioritise financial management at a corporate level, added to the challenges. The Department's Management Board has since put in place more rigorous financial and outcome monitoring systems. Having agreed budgets for 2008-09 that accord with the Department's allocation from the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007, the problems of 2006-07 and 2007-08 are not expected to recur in 2008-09.
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts
Publisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 9780215524973
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 40
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Book Description
This is the 53rd report from the Committee of Public Accounts (HCP 655, session 2007-08, ISBN 9780215524973), and examines how the rail industry, led by the Department for Transport and Network Rail, manages incidents on the rail network, and how passengers are treated when delays occur. The Committee has set out a number of conclusions and recommendations, including: that Network Rail receives only half of its funding from the taxpayer but as a private sector company it is not directly accountable to Parliament, the Committee states the Department should strengthen the governance and accountability arrangements; that the Office of Rail Regulation should review and revise targets where appropriate to take account of changing conditions and challenges; the Committee states that the Department needs to play a more active role in bringing together the rail industry, emergency services and other stakeholders to improve incident management; and further that the Office of Rail Regulation should make sure mechanisms are in place so that the emergency services know who to contact during rail incidents; that passengers are not receiving the information they need during delays and are not always told how to claim compensation for delays. During the 2006-07 period over 1.2 billion passenger journeys were made in Great Britain on services that arrived on time almost nine times out of ten. The Department provided £3.4 billion to Network Rail and £1.7 billion to the train operating companies, whilst passengers paid some £5.1 billion in fares, with the NAO estimating that delays cost passengers £1 billion in terms of lost time. This report follows on from a National Audit Office report (HCP 308, session 2007-08, ISBN 9780102953053).
