Dec 31
Dimwit Revenue Pays Out Money for Nothing
The UK Inland Revenue is know for its voracious appetite for other people’s money but this is unbelievable.
It seems that the Revenue were taking workers on fixed contracts, training them up to do the job then letting them go at the end of the contract and immediately taking new people on to replace them in the same roles.
This is idiotic, but it seems it needed revised government guidelines on civil service employment practice to point it out. Can no-one in a position of responsibility in the Inland Revenue think for themselves?
I think maybe there was another reason why this was going on. One of the early pieces of employment legislation Labour brought in was to grant full protected employment rights to workers after twelve months, as opposed to 24. Realising the cost implications of granting full civil service employment rights including generous final salary pension, annual leave and sick leave, the IR adopted a practice that has become quite common in the private sector – make employees redundant just before their 12 months is up, saving a small fortune. So we have one wing of government trying to get around the problems imposed by another wing of government by employing dubious employment practices.
The problem for the Revenue came when the new government guidelines came out obliging them to extend the contracts of existing, trained employees. So we have the farce of job applicants being paid severance pay for jobs they haven’t worked a single day in!
Having just gone through the annual ordeal of getting everything together for my Self-Assessment Tax Return one has to ask – If we do our own taxes nowadays, what do these people do all day anyway?
