Budget 2009 – HMRC charter

BN92 announces that the maintenance of a charter, and accounting for its performance thereunder, will be statutory obligations imposed upon HMRC.  So, yet more irrelevant law, serving no purposes of note.

Now, if there was, instead, to be a statutory duty of care imposed on HMRC, that would be a different story and certainly one to get excited about. As we enter an era when the demands being placed on both HMRC and the public will lead to an increasingly aggressive tax environment, it is difficult not to think that someone has missed a trick here. The imposition of such a duty on HMRC, with the right to full blown damages where taxpayers suffer loss through HMRC breaches, could have been tied in nicely with the political narrative and introduction of other initiatives, most particularly the introduction of the name and shame policy.

HMRC have been rightly criticised for its approach reflected by the most recent draft of the charter, with this being said to be far too biased towards the interests of HMRC. At least now, HMRC are showing their true colours with this latest renaming of the charter.  

We have, perhaps, now reached the stage where it is realistic to ditch the entire project.