Miscellaneous -
Inland Revenue
Paramedics
using marked vehicles to respond to 999 calls
from home are facing tax bills for hundreds of
pounds. The paramedics, who cover Norfolk and
Suffolk, take their cars home after work so that
they can be available to answer emergencies both
en route, and at home. This "first community
responder" scheme is designed to cut the
time it takes to get a trained lifesaver to a
patient in remote, rural areas. However, the
Inland Revenue has ruled that use of the marked
paramedic vehicles still constitutes a
"taxable benefit" similar to a company
pool car, and has landed some staff with bill
running into hundreds of pounds for the
privilege.
East Anglian Ambulance NHS Trust has paid these
bills for the last couple of years - but says it
cannot carry on doing it forever. It is currently
negotiating with the taxman to try to waive the
rules where there is a "clear social
benefit" from the arrangement. However, the
Association of Professional Ambulance Personnel
is furious. General Secretary Mark Weatherhead
said that staff felt "let down". He
said, "East Anglian Ambulance Trust has
abandoned its staff and left them to foot the
bill, which is unacceptable."
He said that unless the situation improved, staff
would simply leave the vehicles at work, and the
"first responder" scheme would be hit.
Anna Bennett, the finance director of the
ambulance trust denied that it had let the
paramedics down. She said she was hopeful that
the new "Agenda for Change" pay deal
coming into force would more than adequately
compensate paramedics for their extra duties. She
said that negotiations with the Inland Revenue
were ongoing. "What we are looking for is
for them to recognise the community benefit that
this scheme offers."
A
mum told how tax staff sent her a letter
addressed to: "Mrs Michelle
Deserves-Strangling". Michelle Stradling
phoned an automated Inland Revenue line, leaving
her name and address on the voice bank, to get a
children's tax credit pack. Three days later, she
was sent a letter with the insulting address. She
said, "The more I think about it the more
annoyed I become. If that letter had been sent to
someone who had got out of a violent relationship
this could have really set them back."
Michelle, of Yate, South Gloucestershire, added,
"It's not nice to know you are giving
personal information to someone who is so
flippant about your affairs. When I spoke to the
woman in the complaints department she didn't
seem very optimistic they could find who sent out
the letter. She asked me if the person I gave my
details to had an accent - I had to explain it
was an automated machine. They don't even know
their own system."
Husband Graham was stunned when he saw the letter
with the computer printed label. He said,
"It's not what you expect from a Government
department. It's been sent by somebody with a sad
sense of humour." Inland Revenue spokesman
Patrick O'Brien said, "This is completely
unacceptable, the culprit will be subject to
disciplinary proceedings. It's a very serious
breach of staff behaviour. We are very, very
sorry. The last thing we want to do is distress
our customers."
Other insulting letters sent in recent months
include one to pharmacist Pravin Patel, from
Gloucester. He got a letter from reward points
giant Nectar to: "Mr Pravin Fucking
Paki". Welsh businessman Hefin Batty was
sent a letter from a firm of solicitors in Kent,
which began: "Dear Taffy Bastard". Val
Billings, from Wolverhampton, got a letter from a
bank to her late husband Mel, addressed to:
"Mr Billings deceased". And a shop in
Liverpool sent a bill to Elizabeth Murray, who
had died of a heart attack, which began:
"Dear Mrs Dead".
Almost
a million taxpayer records were accidently
deleted from Inland Revenue computer systems
between 1997 and 2000 due to a software problem
which went unnoticed for several years. The
Department took three years to discover that
software used to cleanse its database of old
cases was also wiping live ones from its system.
This resulted in some 364,000 people who cannot
be identified being owed £82m, while another
22,000 did not pay tax due of around £6m. The
Revenue admitted the problem in 2004. A routine
housekeeping procedure on the PAYE database,
which had been in place for at least 10 years,
failed to distinguish between old and live cases.
The error was revealed when a new management
information system was brought in to monitor the
software. The Revenue has since introduced a
backup system. The MPs used the incident to
reinforce their concerns about the Department's
ability to manage the IT underpinning the tax
system. Their attention focused on the serious IT
problems which contributed to the troubled launch
of the tax credits scheme in 2003, described by
Committee Chair Edward Leigh as a
"nightmare", and left many vulnerable
people in financial difficulty. Mr Leigh said,
"There is a general lesson here: that an
ambitious scheme might be fatally undermined by
its intrinsic complexity."
During the course of the Committee's inquiry, the
Department, now known as HM Revenue &
Customs, it had learned the lessons from its
previous IT problems. It is said to be in the
midst of a dispute with EDS, the tax credit
system IT provider, over compensation "for
unsatisfactory system performance". The case
has gone to independent arbitration but, EDS has
not accepted the findings, leaving the Department
to "consider its legal options". The
contract with its new IT provider, Capgemini, has
imposed a more severe penalty regime for
underperformance. The PAC noted that "such
clauses inevitability affected the 'price' of the
contract." The Register
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