THE Island’s tax collector has banked an extra £225m in the past four years by improving the way it gets people to pay, according to the Jersey’s public sector watchdog.
Revenue Jersey has been given a relatively clean bill of health by Comptroller and Auditor General Lynn Pamment in her latest review; however, she calls on it to increase the number of people and firms filing their tax form online.
In her report on the independent collector and manager of tax revenue, Ms Pamment said: “[Revenue Jersey’s] governance structures, clear roles and responsibilities together with reporting arrangements are effective in ensuring that the integrity of the independent role is not compromised. Governance processes and systems are thoroughly and comprehensively documented and kept under review.
“Where there are areas of inefficiency, these are understood but progress to improve and deliver greater efficiencies is slow due to constraints on resources and capacity.
“There is evidence that Revenue Jersey is inefficient due to digital immaturity which increases cost and increases risk.”
Referring to the extra money collected, the report said: “Revenue Jersey has made significant improvements in its approach to compliance work in the last five years which has resulted in substantial benefits in the form of additional revenue and avoidance of lost revenue.
“Since 2022, it is estimated that additional revenue generated is over £225m with £95m of this being cash banked in each year following compliance interventions related to prior years of assessment.”
These interventions include promoting understanding of the rules through clear guidelines and intervening with individual taxpayers to correct historic mistakes or wrongdoing.
The report also finds that it costs 0.8p in Jersey to collect £1 of tax. This compares to just under 1.4p in Guernsey and 1.6p in the Isle of Man. It is 0.5p in the UK and 0.6p in Gibraltar.
This year, Revenue Jersey is expecting to collect more that £1.2 billion in tax, the vast majority of that – £1 billion – coming from income tax.
Ms Pamment also found that the percentage of personal taxpayers filing online in Jersey was low at 54% when compared to other jurisdictions.
She called on the organisation to raise that rate to reduce cost, increase the amount of tax take, and lower the risk of fraud and error.
