HM Revenues and Customs have done it again! You would think that they would have learnt from past mistakes and have a plaque hanging on their wall that says, “failure to plan is planning to fail.”
Not only is their internal administration process still flawed, but now their shiny new Pay As You Earn (PAYE) computer system is thought to be the problem behind 1 million workers facing a surprise £1,500 tax bill.
A new IT project, which had not been properly tested, has meant that 1.4 million tax payers have underpaid. Almost 6 million tax payers will be told over the next few months that they have paid the wrong amount of income tax.
The new computer system, designed to automate a manual process, brought a promise of organisation. The automation of matching up the information on individual records with the end of year HMRC checks, on the amount of deducted tax and national insurance contributions by employees using the PAYE system, did not work as expected.
The project is a good idea, reduce time, resource and cost of the manual effort, but automation can not be achieved if the computer system has not been properly tested.
Most nightmares in this hall of shame have been detrimental in many ways, but it is never funny when it effects the lives of ordinary people. During a time when money is tight, this quality nightmare will hit the unlucky casualties hard.
For more on this story visit: http://news.sky.com/skynews/Article/201009115713464.
Absolutely shocking, perhaps another sign of government organisations failing to sort out their own infrastructure and inadvertently punishing the public. Perhaps this article shows that automating manual processes requires a good manual process to start with… and I would argue that the manual processes intrinsic within the Tax Office will have, in some part, hampered the automation of such tasks. Although I am not really in a position to say for certain why or how this could have happened…
On the up side as someone who appreciates any help in saving money, if I was on the receiving end of a rebate I wouldn’t begrudge the Tax office……. although I would be a little bemused.
Comment by Richard Eldridge — November 1, 2010 @ 8:41 pm