I find it amazing that Taxpayers have to phone 0845 numbers to call the Revenue.Where as agents have special Geographic numbers they can ring,which bypass the queues.

Digging around on the IR website i found this list of alternative no,s for agents.Your members might find it useful.Keep up the good work.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/workingtogether/prioritylines.htm

Welcome.

Thanks for that.

These numbers are highly unlikely not be true alternatives as in the Tax Office can't tell if we rung the 0845 equivalent number or not but if anyone can suggest a reason for me wanting to ring the tax office and I'll try one of these alternatives to see if they will deal with my enquiry or insist I ring the 0845 number and probably speak the exact same call centre/person except it costs me more to ring the 0845 number.

Read this AMAZING quote from the IR website:


Quote:

Following favourable feedback from Working Together partners and individual agents, we are pleased to offer a speed dialling facility for agents telephoning our Taxes Contact Centres.This facility was launched (as a temporary measure) to help agents who were having difficulty contacting us on the public 0845 numbers and enables them to “jump the queue”. The latest list of priority numbers and their corresponding Contact Centres and Area Offices is below.

So some folks can "jump the queue"!!! What about US - the ordinary tax payer????

I'm too busy to issue a FOI request - but someone should look into this if they could be so kind. ie: "who took the decision to give priority to 'agents' whilst leaving the ordinary tax payer to wait in a queue - and paying for the  privilege"

In my opinion everyone incensed by this should complain to their MP and MEP, particularly since "priority" indicates access without premium queuing!

If anyone can afford to pay the premiums it is the agents who are charging all their expenses to their clients!!

PeDaSp - you may be too busy to issue a FOI request, but I might suggest it would be a fairly brave person to 'take on ' the IR - unless you are happy to have the ensuing regular 'investigations' of your affairs (the tax kind!!).
Or am I just an old cynic??

dorf - agree completely, why am I a second class citizen in the eyes of the Revenue?

I'm sqeeky clean on the tax front - so they can come and get me!!

Yes, I assumed such - BUT you are the one with no time to do it, are you not??!!
The rest of us are possibly not so sure of our squeaky cleanliness (tax-wise) so we may have cause to hesitate ;) ;D

DOH! oh yer. Silly me!   ;D

They really really do not like you using those numbers!

I just got a grilling from using one of the "dedicated agent hotline" and was told rather rudly to contact the 0845 numbers provided because "the customer service is better and you can get through to someone quicker"!!!
Was that a pig that just flew past my window?

wrote on Aug 14^th, 2005 at 6:31am:

PeDaSp - you may be too busy to issue a FOI request, but I might suggest it would be a fairly brave person to 'take on ' the IR - unless you are happy to have the ensuing regular 'investigations' of your affairs (the tax kind!!). Or am I just an old cynic??

You can actually complain about the Inland Revenue without it making them investigate your tax affairs.

I already complained by email directly to the members of the whole Inland Revenue main board in January this year about them not having their own online submission form for share options schemes and then not saying on their website which of the third party firms they have approved for providing these electronic returns instead charge and which don't.  I also complained about the 0845 numbers in the same email.

The IT director for the whole Inland Revenue replied and said they had taken a business decision not to provide all their paper forms online (an outrageous thing to say as the government statements on egovernment require them to offer everyting online in the next year or so) and then gave me the old flannel about having to use 0845 because only NGNs offered Intelligent Call Routing Facilities.  They claimed the 0845s reduced queuing times and all the usual propaganda clearly handed to them by the telco terminating the calls.

The thing you mustn't of course do is to be rude to the person in your local tax office who is actually responsible for decisions on reviewing your own specific tax return.  Questioning policy centrally at the Inland Revenue is quite permissible.  The organisation is so big that the officers responsible for your tax file won't even know that you have done this.