Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 8
8
Rejected
New HMRC compliance staff expected to take years to reach full productivity.
Conclusion
HMRC did not initially recruit at scale but has more recently recruited 4,800 new compliance staff, leading to 2,500 more FTE than in 2021–22. HMRC expects staff productivity to increase over the next few years, but told us that new staff take up to four years to be fully productive. The return per staff member is therefore likely to stay lower than before the pandemic due to lack of experience among newer staff.13 Prosecutions
Government Response Summary
The government explicitly disagrees with the committee's observation (interpreted as a recommendation), explaining that reduced yield during the pandemic was due to staff deployment to the Taxpayer Protection Taskforce. They assert that compliance performance should be viewed on a multi-year basis and that HMRC constantly assesses risks to deploy resources effectively.
Government Response
Rejected
HM Government
Rejected
6.4 The government disagrees with the Committee’s recommendation. 6.5 The government did not set performance targets for HMRC during the pandemic (2020-21 and 2021-22). Some of the reduction in yield over the pandemic period is due to the deployment of experienced staff to the Taxpayer Protection Taskforce (TPT) to recover grants that were incorrectly claimed under the COVID-19 support schemes. The backfilling of these posts with new recruits means that the opportunity cost of that deployment will be mitigated – but over a longer time period as it takes time for new recruits to be trained. Over the COVID-19 pandemic period the closure of some large cases has been delayed but this yield will be recovered in future years. Much of this is part of the normal variation of HMRC’s compliance work from one year to the next. Compliance yield performance and the tax compliance gap should always be considered on a multi-year basis. 6.6 In any year, HMRC decides how best to deploy compliance resources against compliance risks in order to deliver the best outcomes. Compliance risks that were not addressed during the COVID-19 pandemic period can still be acted on. HMRC constantly assesses the full range of risks that are present, both new and historical, when deciding how best to deploy its resources.