Revenue staff pose with cut-out faces

The respect the Revenue says it has for customers has been questioned by photos showing tax officials wearing cardboard cut-outs of exasperated people's faces on their heads.



Uploaded to Facebook by a call centre worker at HMRC, the photos were dismissed by the worker as the harmless fun of a group on the website which makes smiley faces out of cardboard boxes.



Jon Dickens, an HMRC employee, also said the images were the result of his Revenue colleagues enjoying themselves during their own time, reported the Mail on Sunday, which published the photos yesterday.



However, Revenue employees are banned from uploading material to social networking websites.



Moreover, HMRC said that all of its staff were required to respect customers; would be disciplined if they didn't, and that it would look into the issues raised by the newspaper.



Alongside the images of HMRC staff wearing cardboard cut-out faces, the web page also contained a link to an animated YouTube video that ridicules callers to the tax office.



Last night, it appeared that all the images have been removed from Facebook, including one visitor's comment, presumably by a taxpayer, that "this group would explain why no one ever answers the goddam phone whenever I call HMRC."