We, as your trade association, are very aware of the frustrations and negative impact on insolvency professionals, resulting from historic and current service levels within HMRC. Many years ago, R3 set up a number of R3/HMRC working groups to deal with operational issues as they arise and to facilitate interaction between the profession and HMRC. These groups, and the regular meetings with R3’s HMRC liaison officer continue, and many projects are currently being worked by HMRC to improve systems and processes within the organisation.
There remains, however, an awareness that despite these issues being raised many areas of concern are still showing no signs of improvement. R3 and the Regulatory Professional Bodies (‘RPBs’) increasingly hear from insolvency professionals about the severe delays, business disruption and frustration that has become a regular occurrence when dealing with HMRC. The current issues being experienced incur additional and unnecessary costs which impact on the returns to creditors, result in regulatory burdens for the profession by prolonging the duration of the insolvency process and delays in returning funds to HMRC and other creditors.
To formally address the above, R3 and the RPBs have collaborated to produce a letter to Myrtle Lloyd, Director General Customer Services at HMRC. The letter provides an overview of the problems and issues faced by insolvency professionals on a daily basis and illustrate that HMRC is not meeting its own Charter standards when it comes to insolvency matters. Furthermore, it asks HMRC to commit to a number of points that would assist insolvency professionals.
We will continue to engage with HMRC at every level to improve processes and systems for insolvency professionals when engaging with HMRC.