Taxman's morale 'could hardly be worse'

Continuing low staff morale at the tax office is threatening the level of service that businesses and its other customers are entitled to.

The warning, by UHY Hacker Young, came after research for the accountancy firm found that not even a fifth of Revenue staff feel motivated to help HMRC “meet its objectives.”

It came on the day that thousands of tax workers walked out of their posts at the Revenue’s offices, in protest to privatisation plans and a new sickness absence system.

As if to underline their concerns, only 13% of the Revenue staff surveyed said changes at HMRC were introduced, or are generally made, for the better.

Thirty-seven per cent say poor performance is not dealt with effectively, the poll of HMRC staff found, and less than one in five have confidence in senior managers.

Although the findings represent an improvement on last year, the sense of disillusionment among HMRC staff is still clear, says UHY Hacker Young tax partner Roy Maugham.

The “worry” is that the department’s customer service seems to be adversely affected.

“It is of great concern that when there is a problem with staff performance, which may impact the service HMRC provides, roughly two out of three employees feel that HMRC is not going to tackle that problem effectively,” he said. “Even HMRC would admit they [the figures] could hardly have been worse.”