CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR
CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR by Dawn Fallon (ISBN 9 798445 671640)
If the title makes you expect Liz Fraser and Robin Asquith having a clothing malfunction while arguing over tax points you’ll be disappointed. But Dawn Fallon’s CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR does give a lively account of what it was like to be a VAT Control Officer in HM Customs and Excise from 1986 to 1995.
While some of the detail of the pre-computer era may surprise a modern day HM Revenue and Customs VAT officer, they will probably feel a shock of recognition at most of Dawn’s experiences. She vividly captures the despair of sitting in a traders premises and realising that none of it matches what you were told in training. Another abiding truth is the pay. In May 2024 Jim Harra told the Public Accounts Committee that almost a third of HMRC staff had to be given a pay increase to ensure the department complied with the National Living Wage. Back in the 1980’s, Dawn is forced to take on extra work (as a Parish Clerk and music teacher) to help pay her mortgage. When she finally buys a car “a feeling of yuppie-ness pervades” when she is able to boost her wages with a mileage claim for use of her private vehicle. But as she admits, “I didn’t think much about vehicle ‘wear and tear’ (and) in reality the 32 pence per mile probably only just covered it.”
Another example of the ebb and flow of Civil Service life is that Dawn’s career is eventually brought to an end in 1994, when the Major Government decides to cut Civil Service jobs as part of its Fundamental Expenditure Review. Years before “Building Our Future” but with the same head-cutting mentality prevailing.
Dawn admits that she never actually wanted to be a VAT inspector. Having passed a Civil Service exam and interview board for the grade of Executive Officer, she was offered jobs with HMCE and the Home Office. She’d have preferred the Home Office job but was told that HMCE had put their bid in first, so had to take that offer!
After a six week training course, Dawn was issued with a briefcase containing two A5 volumes of VAT Law and a set of notices, and sent out into the training district from where she accompanied experienced officers on a variety of visits (“a bit like the sea, always different yet always the same. The type of business would be different…but the basic accounting checks were stolid, unchanging and monotonous.”) There doesn’t seem to be a Fraud Awareness component to her training, and Dawn only gradually becomes aware of trader duplicity as colleagues relate “war stories” while driving to visits. Audits in and around Birmingham range from grocers to glaziers, removal firms to restaurants, often stuffed into a “greasy untidy office” with cold and draughty toilets (“one toilet even had moss growing in the bowl.”)
As she progresses, Dawn captures the uncertainty of the lone audit officer, desperately trying to find some irregularity in the trader’s books to justify her visit, but often feeling guilty when she finally does find an error that will trigger an assessment. “I genuinely felt sorry for many traders. We all knew there were dishonest ones…but overall, our experience was mainly of hard-working honest business people.”
During 1990 ‘performance indicators’ are introduced and officers have to keep records detailing the size of their assessments. Whereas before, part of the job was to educate traders and stop them making errors, “It was now in our interest to … find large assessments to look good on our performance sheets.” The introduction of new surcharges and penalties increased the tension level at each visit, to the point where traders begin phoning in protective complaints about “aggressive behaviour” as soon as a visit has ended. A promotion to HO in a Large Trader district only brings more angst as she realises that the big businesses can afford to hire ex-HMCE VAT officers to plug the gaps: “how was I to rake in big assessments with these squeaky clean traders who had immaculate accounting systems?”
Throughout the book there are nuggets of information that take you by surprise. Remember the discount supermarket chains that didn’t use to stick price tags on their goods? Staff were trained to memorise the price of hundreds of products and only enter them at the till. Dawn relates how she tested one such store with a trolley full of mixed rate goods. The checkout girl picks up each item with one hand and types in the price and VAT button with the other, “like a one handed typist typing at 100 wpm. She never even had to look at the till, her eyes were firmly on the goods. We examined the receipt and it was 100% correct.” An example of the feats dispensable low wage workers could perform in the days before computerisation.
It’s an entertaining book, nevertheless capturing an undocumented slice of history. It is history. HM Customs and Excise is now HM Revenue and Customs. The green folders Dawn describes were digitised at the turn of the Century with the handwritten 465A forms scanned to their electronic equivalent. The concept of a “local” VAT office and regular visits has long since gone. However, the book vividly captures “the loneliness of the long distance audit officer.” Even as an Excise officer, I can recognise the mood. At the end of the day, people are funny buggers and even the biggest company is just a bunch of people.
