Clark Whitehill teams up with ex-IR staff
Tax advisers face a major threat to their livelihoods from hundreds of redundant Inland Revenue inspectors under a new scheme unveiled this week by the public services union PTC and accountancy firm Clark Whitehill.
The PTC plans a nationwide network of franchised tax advisers to help taxpayers cope with the introduction of self-assessment. The launch date is set for late this year. Government figures estimate that 16,000 Revenue staff will have lost their jobs between February 1995 and April 1998.
A further 3,000 jobs will go after self-assessment is brought in.
PTC joint general secretary Clive Brooke said the scheme would be for past and current Revenue staff. He added: ‘We have had over 400 enquiries already. The final number could easily be as high as 1,000. We are confident we’ll attract a lot of good quality staff to run this.’
According to the union, the PTC’s proposed system will be more than just a form-filling exercise and is pitched as a personal counselling service for taxpayers.
Brooke claimed cutbacks at the Revenue were now ‘so extensive’ that staff were being diverted from other duties to ensure self-assessment worked as planned. He also said that the Revenue was engaged in a ‘furious row’ with the Treasury to obtain added funding. He added: ‘Anyone who claims they know what the final impact of all these cuts will be would have to be prophetic. I would question anyone who could give any sort of reassurance about them.
‘The simple truth is that the Revenue doesn’t have the staff it needs to make it work. And it just doesn’t know how the taxpayer population is going to react,’ Brooke added.
A Revenue spokeswoman rejected Brooke’s claims. ‘We are not going back to the Treasury,’ she said.
See self-assessment stories on pages 2 and 8.
