Taxes Office process overhauled following missing money

Tuesday 10 January 2017

The Taxes Office have confirmed that their procedure for handling cash tax payments has undergone a complete overhaul, after their previous processes came under fire during a trial of a man accused of stealing over £800 of tax money last week.

Carl Frankum was acquitted of two counts of theft – £475 in 2012 and £350 in 2013 – from the States of Jersey when he worked as a Payments and Electronic Submissions Team (PEST) officer in the Taxes Office in Cyril Le Marquand House following a two-day trial.

But a question mark remained over the ITIS cash payment handling procedure that allowed the two sums to go missing.

Under normal cash-handling circumstances, the PEST officers would give one receipt to the taxpayer, taking their money and a carbon copy of the receipt up the back stairs to the third floor office for processing.

Former department manager Mr Richard Golding admitted during the trial, however, that it was possible that some PEST members had crossed the public space on occasions to use the lift, presenting a security concern.

He also admitted that there had been at least one instance where cash had been left on his desk, while he had been out of the office.

“It couldn’t really be less secure, could it?” defending Advocate Ian Jones had questioned.

Pictured: Cyril Le Marquand House, where the Taxes Office is based.

But now the Taxes Office have confirmed that “a lot has changed since this incident,” with the PEST team having been dissolved, and all ‘cashiering’ now handled by the Treasury. 

They say that over 98% of islanders have now moved towards electronic payments.

More recently, the Taxes Office stopped routinely accepting cash payments in December last year as part of their digital transformation programme. 

The Taxes Office are confident that electronic payments are “much safer for everyone” and are therefore “strongly recommended.”