Taxation Staff Declared Surplus

We all love to have a go at the tax man. People who work for HMRC have traditionally had very bad press but I have to admit to feeling sorry for them this week.

Apparently they are planning a swathe of redundancies ( wording from The Times , not my own) and the staff found this out via a less than tactful announcement on their intranet. Lesley Strathie the chief executive quietly posted the news with no fanfare.

It went something like this. Of the 3,150 presently employed at these offices 1,450 of them will move to a new location. The other The other 1,700 “will be declared surplus”. Lovely turn of phrase that.

Apparently a recent survey of HMRC officers found that morale is at an all time low. Reports show that the spirits in this career are never particularly high and one can see why that would be. Deep down we know they are just doing their job but must of us in the general public cannot help but despise them It cannot be easy to be so universally disliked. If the forums on their official website are to be believed then things are even more complicated than that.

When hearing of the impending job cuts one poster, presumably an employee had this to say

“Let’s hope that also means getting rid of the management bullies and their utterly useless spreadsheets that waste everyone’s time,”

Well indeed, lets hope so though in my experience those people and their spreadsheets are usually the ones that are the safest at times like this.

Once all the cuts and moving around dust has settled the HMRC will have 235 offices across the UK, a reduction of 130. Given the news recently on the dire lateness of corporate refunds there is definite an irony in these job cuts.