Goodbye to HMRC

Largest exodus of Revenue staff in 4 years

According to figures obtained by top 20 accounting firm UHY Hacker Young, the highest number of staff left the employ of HMRC since 2008/09.

During 2012/13 1,697 employees said goodbye to HMRC, an increase of 68 from the previous year.

Personal tax bore the brunt of the staff casualties with 1,238 resignations. Benefits and credits saw 138 people resign in 2012/13, an increase of more than 300% from 2011/12. HMRC also lost 9 key civil servants in 2012/13, the most in 5 years.

Staff morale has been an issue within the department and if haemorrhaging of these proportions continues HMRC may find it difficult to improve its service. A spokesperson for HMRC said however, “Like all large organisations, it is inevitable that some of HMRC’s 64,000 staff will leave or retire, whilst others will join. This has not affected performance – the most accurate measure of the tax gap shows it is going down, last year’s yield was our biggest ever, and we carried out over 700 prosecutions. Since 2010 almost £1 billion has been invested in HMRC to police the tax rules and more people are employed in our compliance posts than before.”