How many Revenue officials are zealots

G

Gordon Gekko

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It’s a long-time since I did a corporation tax return, but my sense is that Revenue are talking rubbish here. The procedure was always to check the recipients; if they had a CHY Number, you’d give a tax deduction, and if they didn’t, you wouldn’t. There was never any question of deeming a bona fide donation to be BIK. I’d stick to your guns, which to be fair is what your accountant is suggesting. There are some good people in Revenue but unfortunately they don’t tend to interact with most taxpayers. Instead what you get are fundamentalist zealots who mistake their job for collecting as much tax as possible rather than the correct amount of tax.
 

Interesting. What proportion of Revenue’s compliance staff do you reckon are fundamentalist zealots? Is this a new / recent / trending phenomenon, or was it ever thus? Heartening to know that there are some good ones, out of 7,000 odd staff.
 
torblednam said:
Interesting. What proportion of Revenue’s compliance staff do you reckon are fundamentalist zealots? Is this a new / recent / trending phenomenon, or was it ever thus? Heartening to know that there are some good ones, out of 7,000 odd staff.
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Ask yourself, what kind of person chooses to work there? For the ones answering the phones, why are they still doing that if they’re any good? I’ve met many over the years and maybe 1 in 10 has been in any way impressive; they recruited some good people who were at Director level in the Big 4 post the Global Financial Crisis after they were let go and that helped somewhat but even those people were beaten up to a degree by the bureaucracy and inefficiency of the place.

e.g. “torblednam, why are you processing so many files per day? You’re making your colleagues look bad.”

But the biggest issue that I’ve seen over the years is that fundamentalist tendency; they mistake their job for collecting as much tax as possible when it’s is actually to collect precisely the correct amount of tax.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
they mistake their job for collecting as much tax as possible when it’s is actually to collect precisely the correct amount of tax.
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But Gordon

In the example from which I moved your comment, the guys are collecting the right amount of tax.

You think that the tax law should be changed. I disagree with you.

Your zealotry is my diligence.

Brendan
 
I have a certain pleasure in knowing, they will not be collecting much in the way of CGT, or exit tax from Ucits funds.
 
Brendan Burgess said:
But Gordon

In the example from which I moved your comment, the guys are collecting the right amount of tax.

You think that the tax law should be changed. I disagree with you.

Your zealotry is my diligence.

Brendan
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But they’re not Brendan. They’re recharacterising a donation by a corporate to a charity as a taxable benefit in kind and looking for circa 50% income tax from a director/owner. There’s no statutory basis for them to do that. The fact that the charity isn’t CHY Revenue approved just means that the company is denied its corporation tax deduction, i.e. no tax break.
 
fistophobia said:
I have a certain pleasure in knowing, they will not be collecting much in the way of CGT, or exit tax from Ucits funds.
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Why so?

I'm sure there are plenty of investors that are cashing out their positions at the moment. Bear in mind that equities are still well ahead of where they were five years ago.

My personal experience with any Revenue employee that I have ever come into contact with has always been very positive. Maybe I've been lucky but I've always been met with courtesy and professionalism.
 

The people in Large Cases Division tend to be a cut above the rest
 
Gordon Gekko said:
Ask yourself, what kind of person chooses to work there?
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I frequently do Gordon, pretty much daily

Gordon Gekko said:
For the ones answering the phones, why are they still doing that if they’re any good?
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I'd take the view that Revenue, no different to any other large bureaucratic / hierarchical employer in the private or public sector is a microcosm of the workforce as a whole; in a lot of cases people find their level, some bide their time and avail of family friendly working arrangements, some hugely capable people lack ambition to progress. So, all sorts of reasons - I think it's preposterous to suggest / assume that anyone answering the phones, in Revenue or anywhere else, aren't "any good". It kinda smacks of snobbery to be honest.

Due to the demographics of Revenue, they are recruiting substantial numbers of new staff on an ongoing basis - over 150 new clerical officers (phone answerers in your parlance) in the first quarter of this year alone - this was why I was interested to see if the "zealots" assertion was a longstanding view or something emergent since, to use an Only Fools & Horses analogy, Trigger's sweeping brush has had much of both the handle and the head replaced in the last 5 - 10 years...

They must do a great job of indoctrinating / brainwashing all of the newbies, don't you think, credit where credit's due etc...?!

Anyone coming from Director level in Big 4 would be joining Revenue at Assistant Principal or more likely Principal Officer level, so you are talking about a very small number of people there.

At that level there is absolutely no question of this happening:
Gordon Gekko said:
e.g. “torblednam, why are you processing so many files per day? You’re making your colleagues look bad.”
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No different than any other large organisation, people are generally quite ambitious and competitive at that level. This comment actually demonstrates your lack of understanding of the realities for people operating in the most senior grades.

Interestingly, Revenue has hired a good number of staff, at the junior / mid management levels with Big 4, Top 20 and small / mid-tier practice experience and accounting and/or tax qualifications that they garnered there. These must make up at least some of the 90% of spacewasters that you have encountered... so it makes for an interesting corollary of your assertion - since these make up the cohort of Revenue's compliance staff - what proportion of the people gaining accounting / tax exams in the private sector aren't any good...?

Gordon Gekko said:
But the biggest issue that I’ve seen over the years is that fundamentalist tendency; they mistake their job for collecting as much tax as possible when it’s is actually to collect precisely the correct amount of tax.
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This is very interesting, since there are very accessible complaint and review procedures for people aggrieved by their dealings with Revenue. Have you availed of these in relation to any / many of the zealots down through the years?
 
Purple said:
They, along with the passport Office, stand out from the crowd.
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The ONLINE passport office? As in, applications in recent years?
Before that I found the passport service to be pretty poor in the greater scheme of things.
 
torblednam, thank you for your response. My comments are not directed at you. However, I stand by my comments regarding the organisation. Its role is to collect the correct amount of tax, yet in reality it is closer to Alex Ferguson referring his opponents’ games.
 

The Mission Statement of Revenue is:
'To serve the community by fairly and efficiently collecting taxes and duties and implementing Customs controls.'

Any zealot or fundamentalist, starting with that as their Book of Genesis, would struggle to translate that into screw everyone for as much as you can, or whatever it is exactly that you perceive the attitude to be.

I'd be quite confident that nobody at a senior level of Revenue has any desire to collect tax that isn't due. Particularly since there is both an internal audit function (and I'm sure you don't need telling, if you're looking for zealots in any large organisation you'll know that's a good place to start) and the spectre of the C&AG audit looming large every year, and Revenue top brass are quite unlikely to harbour a desire to find themselves under the gaze of the PAC to explain unjustifiable policies. I expect any senior Revenue official speaking freely would in all likelihood say they have enough on their plate trying to collect and / or find the tax that is due, without looking for tax that isn't due.

The foregoing is just basic common sense, although I suppose you might say that common sense considerations won't be high on the agenda of a zealot..!

Anyway, I digress; I thought your problem was with zealotry you encounter at the individual level - are you saying that you believe it is a cultural thing, at organisational level, then? Not written down obviously (unless it's somewhere in the FOI exempted bits of the Revenue manuals), but somehow transmitted by osmosis, or some kind of groupthink, amongst individuals in the organisation?
 
Gordon Gekko said:
Paper does not refuse ink. Missions statements are hardly reality.
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Can you address the thing in any substantive way?

It is an organisational level thing, or it's not? It is a policy level thing, or it's not?

You're the one who asserted "Instead what you get are fundamentalist zealots who mistake their job for collecting as much tax as possible rather than the correct amount of tax" and then doubled down that this is 90% of Revenue staff, in your experience. Qui dicit, non qui negat.
 
I believe it’s a cultural thing right from the top of the organisation.

Look, I’m entitled to my view, as are you.
 
rob oyle said:
The ONLINE passport office? As in, applications in recent years?
Before that I found the passport service to be pretty poor in the greater scheme of things.
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I always found them good. The queues were due to people (like me on occasion) not getting their act together. In recent years if you need to go into the passport office you book a 10 or 15 minute slot online. You turn up, do what you need to do, and leave. No queues at all.
 
Every organisation has zealots, dossers and normal hard working people and Revenue is no exception. If Revenue didn't do its job and chase the odd person or two, it wouldn't be doing its job. The fear I have is that Revenue can "chase" easy targets instead of real targets.

I bet some people working in Revenue can see zealots in action every week. From what happened in other government agencies potential whistleblowers probably would remain quiet and so the zealots can drive on unhindered until some innocent victim takes his/her case to the Revenue Appeals Process. This can take up to two years to resolve. But, I reckon most such cases are resolved before the appeal is heard.

If we can source figures of the appeal process (i.e. those which run full course and those settled within the procedure) perhaps then the zealots can be weeded out?
 
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