So, I’m accountant not an IT person so my perspective on this as someone who as watched IT projects in both the public and private sector prove difficult and costly not as a technical participant in them.
I think having an IT system that will handle all tax matters, and winter fuel payments, and free bus passes and all the other benefits would be a very large system indeed and very complex. There seems to be an exponetial link between the size and complexity of the system and the cost of building it and then servicing it. The bigger they system the more, more expensive it is.
There’s a political angle here too. The public seemed very reluctant to have a joined up system for ID cards. I am not sure there is the political appetite to say to the UK - Hey guys we’re going to put you all on a massive database, so we can tax some of you more, promise we won’t lose any data.
I think part of the reason why HMRC struggle is the quality control issue and the batch processing issue. Getting someone’s tax code wrong, when you are the tax authorities, is bad and I suspect the HMRC system is strung about with quality controls. HMRC also can’t refuse to do business with you if your requirements are complex. They have to offer 100% service to 100% of the population, no matter how strange and wonderful their circumstances are. So the system has to deal with all possible cases.
I suspect that the HMRC system doesn’t in fact cope well with atypical cases and that these dealt with off-line.
So for a team of, say a dozen data processing posts, you need a couple of supervisory positions instead of one and a couple of extra bods to deal with the non-standard batch stuff. Which probably adds 100% to the cost of the team, allowing for span of control issues and scalar chains for supervision and support services maybe more.
I think having an IT system that will handle all tax matters, and winter fuel payments, and free bus passes and all the other benefits would be a very large system indeed and very complex. There seems to be an exponetial link between the size and complexity of the system and the cost of building it and then servicing it. The bigger they system the more, more expensive it is.
There’s a political angle here too. The public seemed very reluctant to have a joined up system for ID cards. I am not sure there is the political appetite to say to the UK - Hey guys we’re going to put you all on a massive database, so we can tax some of you more, promise we won’t lose any data.
I think part of the reason why HMRC struggle is the quality control issue and the batch processing issue. Getting someone’s tax code wrong, when you are the tax authorities, is bad and I suspect the HMRC system is strung about with quality controls. HMRC also can’t refuse to do business with you if your requirements are complex. They have to offer 100% service to 100% of the population, no matter how strange and wonderful their circumstances are. So the system has to deal with all possible cases.
I suspect that the HMRC system doesn’t in fact cope well with atypical cases and that these dealt with off-line.
So for a team of, say a dozen data processing posts, you need a couple of supervisory positions instead of one and a couple of extra bods to deal with the non-standard batch stuff. Which probably adds 100% to the cost of the team, allowing for span of control issues and scalar chains for supervision and support services maybe more.
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