Quote:
Originally Posted by Neil
I think that HMRC is totally screwed up since the merger between Customs and Revenue. I know someone who has been in Customs since leaving school. The Revenue lot were on higher pay grades than the Customs lot. This has meant that when job opportunities come up in the Customs side there are lots of Revenue workers at a high enough grade to be considered. What is actually happening is that teams of Customs Officer's are now under the control of Tax Inspectors who know nothing about under cover Custom's operations etc. They appear to have got the jobs because of the grade they are on not their level of experience.
Now must be a good time to become a smuggler   |
It's not really relevant to this particular issue but I will set the record straight here.
Inland Revenue used to be higher paid than other departments because of the huge, diverse amount of knowledge we were required to have. The disparity in pay disappeared 20 years ago.
When IR merged with C & E there were cross-overs both ways. There may have been more high grade people in IR but that's because it was a much bigger organisation. The director in charge of my last job in HMRC was a lady from former C & E. She knew nothing about tax when she took over.
The biggest part of what the C & E did, prior to the merger, was not Customs - it was VAT and that's what some Revenue managers began to cover.
Having said all that I agree with you that things have only got worse since the departments merged. It's all due, as I've said before and Margaret verifies, to the "culling" of staff in the name of economy.