In her first speech to the States as P&R President, Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez has said she’s confident that “tangible improvements” are coming from the Revenue Service.
The tax office has been beset by bad press in recent years with members of the public waiting years for their income tax to be assessed.
There are numerous examples of people receiving incorrect bills, while other people have waited months for rebates that are promised to arrive within weeks.
Deputy de Sausmarez said the Revenue Service is one project which P&R is giving particular attention to.
“The backlogs and other challenges have been well publicised, and I can assure members that these issues are being addressed as an immediate priority,” she said.
“There’s no overnight fix, but we are working on a number of different solutions, building on the feedback from staff and customers. While many solutions will be around how technology is utilised, it is as important that we look at the underlying processes and the customer experiences.
“I have been reassured by the level of focus being given to this matter by the most senior officers in the organisation, alongside their Revenue Service colleagues, and am confident that the focused work underway and plans being developed will lead to tangible improvements. We will keep members and the public updated, and I expect by the time of my next committee statement in January to provide a positive report on the steps that have been taken.”
The Revenue Service had issued regular updates on how its staff are working through the tax backlog until last year when they stopped in November.
An update issued earlier this year said the tax backlog statistics would be updated at the end of June.
A statement posted to gov.gg said that “the Revenue Service is continuing to transform and modernise its tax administration, recently introducing new systems to improve efficiency”.
It said that since mid-May, staff have started issuing final assessments for earlier years, with 3,500 final assessments having been sent to customers at that time.
“Releasing these in a controlled manner ensures all of the systems and subsequent processes are embedded and that staff can manage potential enquiries from customers. This is being actively monitored so that we determine when we can start increasing the number of assessments that are released each day”, said the statement.
“We will update the backlog statistics at the end of June, when we expect to see the backlog reducing as we issue the assessments that have been waiting to be issued over this period.
“We are also working on several other measures designed to improve our customers’ experience, one (relating to changing the risk parameters when processing tax returns) of which will further increase the number of returns being automatically assessed.”
At the time of publication the tax backlog statistics have still not been updated since November 2024.