Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC)

Taxation Print Email

Introduction to Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs

HMRC, short for Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, is a non-ministerial department of the UK government responsible for tax collection in addition to the payment of some forms of state support. The HMRC was created as a merger of the Inland Revenue and Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise. This merger occurred on 18th April, 2005. The department features a logo as the St Edward’s Crown enclosed within a circle.

Departmental Responsibilities

The main responsibility of the department includes the administration and collection of direct taxes like income tax and corporation tax, capital taxes like inheritance tax and capital tax gains, indirect tax like value added tax, excise duties and stamp duty land tax, and environmental taxes like air passenger duty and the climate change levy. Other parts of the departmental responsibilities of the HMRC include National Insurance contributions, the distribution of child benefit, and some additional forms of state support counting the Child Trust Fund, payments of Tax Credits, enforcing the national minimum wage and collecting and publishing the trade-in-goods statistics.

Besides, the HMRC features two outwitting Public Service Agreement targets for the period 2008-2011. These are as follows:

1. Improving the extent to which the due tax is paid by individuals and businesses in addition to improving receipts and payments of credits they are entitled to.

2. Improving the experiences of HMRC customers as well as the UK business environment.

Governance Structure

With an office complex in the city of Nottingham, the HMRC Board comprises of members of the Executive Committee and non-executive directors with the main objectives being the development and approval of HMRC’s overall strategy, approving the final business plans in addition to advising the Chief Executive on key appointments. Besides, it also executes an assurance role and advises on best practice.

Performance and Achievements

The collection of HMRC reached £435.7 billion for The Treasury in 2008-09. At the end of March 2009, HMRC was successfully managing 20 million ‘open’ cases(where the systems of the department recognize the discrepancies in taxpayer records or are not able to match a return to a record) which could affect about 4.5 million individuals who might have overpaid a total of £1.6 billion of tax and other 1.5 million individuals who might have underpaid a total of £400 million of tax. 

Login to ReadyRatios

 

Have you forgotten your password?

Are you a new user?

Login As
You can log in if you are registered at one of these services: