STAFF at the Inland Revenue have seen the human side of the taxman after it emerged yesterday that employees working on the chaotic introduction of the new tax credits have been given an extra day’s holiday.
A spokesman for the Inland Revenue said that the decision was a response to the “severe pressure” to which staff had been exposed during the administration of the new system.
He said: “The (Inland Revenue) board is grateful for the tremendous effort by staff over a difficult period.”
The introduction of tax credits, in April this year, has been dogged by a series of technical errors that have left hundreds of thousands of claimants out of pocket.
EDS, the computer company that runs the Revenue’s IT systems, has come under increasing pressure to pay compensation for the debacle, after a series of technology glitches delayed payouts.
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Revenue staff have been left to face the backlash from disgruntled tax credit claimants.
By the middle of May, nearly two months after the launch of the new child tax credit and working tax credit, 500,000 families were still waiting for crucial payments.
By the start of July, 220,000 applications still had not been processed.
Tax offices have buckled under the strain of processing the backlog. It emerged last month that harassed Revenue staff had abandoned two million calls to the tax credit helpline, as they struggled to cope with the volume of inquiries.
But the Revenue this week said it that was on track to hit the target of giving the tax credit to 5.8 million families, as was pledged by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, in the April Budget.
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The Revenue said that 90,000 applications remained outstanding.