Revenue Service - ‘Mistakes have been put right and should not be repeated’

States officials admit that public trust in the service has been damaged after inaccurate information was sent out about personal allowances, rebates and social security contributions.

But they are assuring customers that the mistakes have been put right and should not be repeated.

‘It is really unfortunate that there have been three separate and quite high-profile mistakes in the past couple of months. It is bound to knock people’s confidence,’ said States Treasurer Bethan Haines.

‘We apologise for those mistakes. We are working hard to make a better service. We are responding to those errors by making sure we put in more quality assurance and checks so that we don’t find ourselves in the same situation again.

‘There isn’t any systemic underlying issue causing us concern. We’ve had three very unfortunate errors. We are not complacent.’

Taxpayers who have not yet filed returns for 2021 are due to receive reminders this week.

But the director of the Revenue Service, Nicky Forshaw, said she did not expect further errors of the same type or scale.

‘We apologise for any inconvenience caused to any of our customers,’ she said.

‘We have put additional quality assurance in place to try to make sure that doesn’t happen again.’

Recent problems include misinforming taxpayers about their annual personal allowance, incorrectly announcing rebates, and advising pensioners of higher social security rates than they are required to pay.

Mrs Forshaw said that bringing together different collection systems, following the merger of income tax and social security, and recruitment difficulties had contributed to the recent errors.

‘The Revenue Service has a fantastic team working as hard as it can under some extremely challenging circumstances – running dual systems, being asked to work with new processes and systems, and still trying to deliver day-to-day services,’ she said.

‘It’s a challenging environment in which to recruit and we have vacancies.

‘The combination of those things is causing some challenges and unfortunately recently we have seen the result of those pressures.’

Head of service delivery Sarah Davies said the Revenue Service was working with other senior States officials to obtain more staff support over the next few weeks.

‘We acknowledge errors have been made,’ she said.

‘We are learning from those mistakes. We realise the impact they have on our customers and our staff.

‘We’ve got a fantastic team of people working really hard to try to deliver a service that they would want to receive if they were customers. We are keen to ensure they feel supported.’

Mrs Forshaw said islanders should get in touch if they have any questions about tax or social security contributions.

‘The service is there to help customers. If they have any queries or concerns, they can pick up the phone and call the service,’ she said.

n The Revenue Service is the responsibility of the Policy & Resources.

The Guernsey Press asked questions of P&R at political level about the recent series of problems affecting taxpayers and social security contributors, but no reply was received by the time of going to print.