Former staff called back to help clear income tax backlog

Friday 14 January 2022

The States' Revenue Service has taken back on former members of staff and may soon employ local accountants on secondment to help tackle a huge backlog of tax returns.

More than three in ten tax returns from 2019 have not yet been processed and some tax returns remain outstanding from 2018.

The deadline has not yet passed to submit tax returns for 2020 and the Revenue Service is not publishing figures on how many of that year's returns are yet to be processed.

The Revenue Service is the responsibility of the Policy & Resources Committee. The Committee yesterday put up an official rather than an elected member to explain and apologise for the backlog. 

“We understand that our customers are frustrated at the delays and we apologise for this,” said Sarah Davies, Head of Service Delivery.

“The Service is doing its best to get through as many returns as we can, which is why we’ve brought in this additional support, and we hope to get through assessments faster.”

Pictured: The States are undergoing large-scale technology changes, including in customer services, which they say will improve the experience of people dealing with departments such as the Revenue Service, now based at Edward T Wheadon House. 

Changes to technology which were introduced to speed up internal processes have faced teething problems and tax returns are once again being processed manually.

“We would like to ask customers not to follow up with us on the progress of their return at this time, so that we can focus our efforts on getting assessments done,” said Mrs Davies.

“We will provide you with your assessment as soon as we possibly can and we thank you for your patience.”