Difficulty in judging merits of the Revenue

How can the performance of the Revenue Commissioners be judged? On the amount of revenue collected, which last year amounted to £23.89 billion (€30.3 billion)? Not really; that mostly reflects the booming economy, though the Revenue's ability to collect outstanding taxes - this amounted to £112 million last year - does play a small part. The efficiency of the Revenue can, of course, be judged by the cost of administering the service. On this basis, the trend is healthy. The cost of administration, as a percentage of gross receipts, has been falling each year - in 1995 this amounted to 1.26 per cent and by 1999 it had fallen to 0.88 per cent.

The tribunals have reflected on the Revenue but all-important for many taxpayers is the service (and the speed of dealing with queries). On this score the tax collectors fell behind in 1999. Granted, the follow-up action on DIRT, and Ansbacher, put substantial pressure on the tax personnel. And the Revenue annual report said following the 1999 Budget "our front-line staff on PAYE came under pressure in servicing enquiries from tax payers about the nature of the Budget changes - the move to tax credits. The increase in total employment and the frequency of job changes added to our difficulties".

This is reflected in a snapshot of some of the services provided. As can be seen, most of the services disimproved.

Correspondence. The Revenue's standard was to reply to 100 per cent of routine matters within 20 working days. There was a deterioration in service with only 81 per cent replied to. This contrasted with the 96 per cent in 1998.

All complex correspondence was to be replied to within 30 days. Curiously, there was an improvement with 94 per cent replied to compared with 86 per cent.

PAYE repayments (current year). The standard was to refund 80 per cent within 10 days and 100 per cent within 20 days. Only 63 per cent, compared with 76 per cent, were refunded within 10 days, while 90 per cent received refunds within 20 days which was down on the 96 per cent previously.

Income tax repayments. The standard was to refund 80 per cent within 20 days and 100 per cent within 40 days. Another disimprovement in service. There were refunds to 51 per cent, sharply down on the 74 per cent within 20 days, and 87 per cent compared with 96 per cent within 40 days.

Corporation tax repayments. The standard was to refund 80 per cent within 20 days and 100 per cent within 40 days. There was no change for refunds within 20 days, while there was a slight disimprovement, with 95 per cent receiving refunds within 40 days.

VAT repayments. The standard was to refund 85 per cent within 10 days and 100 per cent within 30 days. An improvement in service with 81 per cent receiving refunds compared with 80 per cent within 10 days and 94 per cent getting refunds, compared with 88 per cent within 30 days.

Processing corporation tax returns. The standard was to process 90 per cent within 20 working days and 100 per cent within 30 days. Here there was a marginal improvement, with 81 per cent processed, (compared with 79 per cent) within 20 working days and 92 per cent processed (89 per cent) within 30 working days.

Stamp Duty - adjudication and straight stamping. The standard was to cover 80 per cent received by post within five days, 90 per cent within 10 days, and 100 per cent received in the public office stamped on day of presentation. Here the service was mixed, with an unchanged 100 per cent on day of presentation, 24 per cent (23 per cent) within 5 days and 56 per cent (68 per cent) within 10 days.

Stamp duty - companies' capital duty. The standard was to process 100 per cent within five days. This was unchanged with the standard achieved.

Stamp Duty - composition duty and levies. The standard was to process 80 per cent within five days and 90 per cent within 10 days. Service was improved with 96 per cent (80 per cent) processed within 5 days and 98 per cent (90 per cent) processed within 10 days.

Stamp Duty - Crest. The standard was to refund 90 per cent within 10 days and 100 per cent within 30 days. A disimprovement in service with only 53 per cent (90 per cent) refunded within 10 days and 97 per cent (100 per cent) within 30 days. The Revenue's annual report is conscious of the shortcomings and has expressed regret for the delays. But these shortcomings are known only because of the unprecedented step the Revenue took in 1998 with the publication of a booklet setting out in detail the standard of service taxpayers would expect.

While that service, in general, was lower last year, it now says it introduced major improvements in administration in November and further changes are planned. The benefits from these are expected to come through this year. One way would be to encourage more e-mail queries - last year there were only 1,933 compared with 5 million correspondence, 3.6 million telephone calls and 822,000 personal callers. But are some of the standards set by the Revenue in keeping with servicing a modern economy? Surely the norm for replying to routine correspondence should be within 7 to 10 days, and not 20 days.