Senator Kristina Moore, who chairs the Corporate Services Scrutiny panel, said the service provided by Revenue Jersey left ‘a lot to be desired’, and was exacerbated by concerns over plans to switch all Islanders to a ‘current year’ basis for paying tax.
The government has defended the record of Revenue Jersey, saying it has encountered a 30% rise in queries but had nevertheless processed more than 80% of the 2019 tax returns received.
A total of 9,000 of the 2019 returns remaining to be processed was a comparable number to October 2018, a government spokesperson said, and ahead of last year’s position.
‘We are hearing from disgruntled members of the community and continue to have concerns about both the access and response times,’ Senator Moore said. ‘The views and feedback we are receiving from the public is that many have lost confidence in the system.’
Responding to questions from the JEP, a government spokesperson said the average wait for postal queries had increased by 25%, from 24 to 30 days, since last year, while computer systems could not currently measure the waiting time for email queries.
Financial concerns relating to Covid-19 had led an increased number of queries, the spokesperson said, with the volume of email and postal queries for the year to 30 September being around 30% higher than the same period in 2019.
‘Staff are dealing with these queries, along with other tax-related queries and 2019 assessments, as quickly as they can,’ the spokesperson added, with customers prioritised if they were considered to be in financial distress.
Revenue Jersey said phone or postal queries were better than email due to the need not to include confidential information in emails, and asked those with outstanding queries to be patient, rather than chasing up by email or phone, which could cause additional delay.
Those experiencing long waits when phoning may soon be able to be called back. The spokesperson said it was hoped to introduce a call-back facility for customers who had been on hold for more than five minutes.
Staffing levels had not been a significant concern over the past 12 months, the spokesperson added, with four current vacancies among a total of 120 ‘full-time equivalent’ staff.
But the staffing claim was lambasted as ‘ridiculous’ by Senator Moore, who pointed to a hearing in February which referred to – at the time – 43 vacancies having recently been filled and another 17 being vacant.
‘How they can now argue that there hasn’t been a problem – that’s half the team?’ she asked. ‘The numbers speak for themselves. Anyone who has managed a team in the private sector would have been hauled over the coals and had serious questions to answer had they lost 50% of their team, taking with them considerable knowledge and experience.
‘The vacancies might have been filled now, but the new staff have to learn the system – many of them come from HMRC [in the UK], which works to a very different principle to Jersey.
‘As a panel we have heard from a number of people who have received conflicting advice from officers who do not properly understand the system here.’
