‘Taxman’ strike on 31 January 2012

Thousands of HMRC staff are planning to strike work on 31 January 2012, the deadline for filing self-assessment tax return online. The strike action has been called by the Public Commercial Services (PCS) union against HMRC’s plans to improve the way it handles peaks in phone calls to its contact centres. Newspaper reports quoted HMRC saying it would waive the automatic £100 late fines for a taxpayer whose return was delayed if s/he could not get through to HMRC by phone on the strike day. Whilst the strike should not stop anyone from filing their returns online that particular day i.e. 31 January 2012, ass HMRC system should be largely unaffected, getting through to the HMRC call centre could be next to impossible. That is because getting through to their call centre even on a non-strike day is not easy! Should taxpayers feel disadvantaged by the strike they should take it up with HMRC to avoid the mandatory automatic fine.