The £120 Team - Winner of the Operational Delivery Award, sponsored by BT

On 13 May 2008, the chancellor announced an unprecedented in-year £600 increase to the income tax personal allowance and a reduction to the basic rate limit during the 2008-09 tax year.

This presented HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) with a unique challenge. In the usual way, the chancellor had announced the personal allowance and rate limits for 2008-09 well before the start of the tax year to enable software developers, employers and pension providers to make changes to their payroll software and systems so that they would deduct the right of tax through Pay As You Earn (PAYE) from April 2008.

HMRC had a highly constrained deadline to:

• support the necessary legislative changes to the Finance Bill already under scrutiny by Parliament;
• arrange for the recalculation of 32 million codes on our computer systems;
• issue instructions and guidance to millions of employers, agents and software developers to help them implement the changes to their payrolls and products;
• communicate the changes to individuals and the media in easily understood language.

This work was unplanned, so HMRC rescheduled and reprioritised other critical work to focus resources to guarantee that the changes would be made by the middle of August.

A cross-disciplinary HMRC team made up of policy, legal, operational, processing, computer systems and communications colleagues worked closely together and with Treasury colleagues and PAYE software developers, employers’ representatives and pension providers.

Careful prioritising meant that any amended code numbers could be implemented in time for people to start receiving repayments in their pay packets from 7 September.

After the exercise, Richard Bacon, head of tax at the Institute Of Directors said “I think HMRC has done a decent job of letting people know what is required”.

civil service awards, shortlist, Operational Delivery Award, HMRC

Last updated 242 days ago by Kevin Sorkin