HMRC dangles £500M carrot for National Insurance system revamp

The UK government is inviting suppliers to bid to build a new national insurance system with a price tag of up to £500 million. The tax collector, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), has issued a call to speak to suppliers about the procurement to continue to run and then update the National Insurance and PAYE System (NPS). The “ …

[Duffaboy]

Lets hope a certain provider(s)

Is banned from the bidding process however i very much doubt it.

[Korev]

Re: Lets hope a certain provider(s)

There have been so many screwups in British outsourcing that I don't know which of the usual suspects you mean

[lordminty]

Re: Lets hope a certain provider(s)

Fujitsu will probably be the only ones willing to go near it. Hardly surprising given its history with HMRC.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Lets hope a certain provider(s)

Fujitsu + HMRC + maths.

What could go wrong.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Lets hope a certain provider(s)

Fujitsu shouldn't be allowed to bid - that would be totally unfair.

It's CapGemini's turn

[Efer Brick]

Re: Lets hope a certain provider(s)

definitely on the horizon

[Anonymous Coward]

£500M!

£500M!

That won't even cover the costs of the enquiry this will need in about 10yr to rack over the disaster it is bound to be.

I'll put in an early bet of costs hitting £2.5B before the enquiry kicks off

[FirstTangoInParis]

Re: £500M!

I’d do it myself (employing others) for that much. Yeah, there are loads of gov conditions but hey.

0. Check what customer actually wants for the budget (because gov requirements are often fantasy finance)

1. Transition to new hardware as required.

2. Break apart SLOWLY to cleaner architecture with same functionality.

3. Begin to add or subtract functionality with sensible and affordable contract changes.

There you go Fujitsu, Capita, etc it’s not that hard really.

[Natalie Gritpants Jr]

How about plan to roll National Insurance into PAYE? Employers NI is being used as a stealth tax by all the parties as they don't mention it in their tax promises and hope we don't notice. It's all tax and this fake differentiation is fooling no-one.

Move employee NI into PAYE and peoples take home pay won't change noticeably, Move employer NI to corporation tax and the incentive to replace humans with AI/robots will be reduced.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

That's far too sensible. The tax advisors/consultants employed by the government will never advocate that. It'll be like turkeys voting for Christmas/Thanksgiving

[Like a badger]

Move employee NI into PAYE and peoples take home pay won't change noticeably

No, but it would become very apparent that the true marginal tax rate between 20k and 50k is 36.7%. Government very much prefer complex taxes that they think (probably correctly) the proles won't understand, and thus they can maintain the fiction that the base rate of tax is 20%.

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that but once upon a time I worked in a factory through the summer as a student to earn beer tokens.

The guys that worked there permanently were not well educated and they worked a mind numbing 12hrs a day watching items go down on a production line, and then filling the machines back up with shrink wrap and labels etc.

Most of the time, yes they did not come across as particularly bright but...come a time when they needed to calculate tax and / or benefits it was like some latent mathmatical talent activated. For 20 min they were all mathmatical and taxation geniuses. Then back to the line.

So I think a lot more people than you assume know the government takes the proverbial out of them. What is actually missing is the will to do anything about it.

[Timto]

George Osborne was going to do this but then he backed out when he realised Old People (Tory Voters) pay Income tax but not N.I. so it would affect their chances of being re-elected

[nobody who matters]

".......Old People (Tory Voters)......"

Do Labour or LibDem voters not grow old? Or are they not allowed to vote when they do get old? An interested mind would love to know why you think old people are Tory voters (or conversely, that the Tory voters are all old people).

[Timto]

People become more conservative as they get older.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Personally I blame pop music, all these 65 year old pensioners grew up listening to the Sex Pistols

[Fruit and Nutcase]

"Middle age is when a broad mind and a narrow waist change places"

[James Anderson]

Clarification

Old people with company pensions (Tory voters).

* an ancient custom where generous employers ran a savings scheme which paid out after employees retired, It was common in the last century.

[David Hicklin]

> George Osborne was going to do this but then he backed out when he realised Old People (Tory Voters) pay Income tax but not N.I. so it would affect their chances of being re-elected

There would also be other winners and loosers as the rate the individual (not sure about the company tax side) changes differently to that of your personal tax allowance, and there different rates of NI that only kick in (if I remember this right - retired now so no NI!) if you exceed your personal allowance in the first place

[Fruit and Nutcase]

"HMRC will publish the tender notice, inviting suppliers to bid for the contract"

The cynic in me thinks that invitation will go out to a select few "usual suspects" with an excellent record of delivering government contracts on time, on budget with minimal defects to the agreed specification

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

The bid is open to anyone who meets the requirements to be an approved government IT supplier

The requirements are available to all currently approved government IT suppliers

Totally fair and honest and open system

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't be the thousandth time that a tender was written with requirements that could only be fulfilled by the preferred bidder.

e.g. "Must demonstrate significant previous experience of major HMRC transformation projects and have a compny name beginning with 'F' and ending in 'ujitsu".

Or "Must have recently bought a nice lunch for the CEO and gone to school / played rugger with the ministerial decision maker"

[elsergiovolador]

Which

Which foreign corporation will lap the contract?

Of course that has nothing to do with inability to audit capital flow once it leaves the UK.

*wink*

[AtomicDog]

Or, here's a suggestion...

Hire a crack team. Build and operate it internally.

Just as - if not more - likely to succeed; significantly cheaper; guarantee that ~50% of the "cost" will come straight back in Income Tax and NICs; keep more of the money in the UK.

It's not rocket science guys.

[Like a badger]

Re: Or, here's a suggestion...

It may not be rocket science, but the problem is that government is not a thinking entity. As things stand (a) government has very little in house IT management expertise, (b) government pays scales aren't sufficient to attract and retain the necessary IT professionals to design and deliver a system, and (c) government have in place headcount caps per department that are inviolable unless signed off by Cabinet Office.

So whilst a traditional outsource design/develop/build/implement/support will end up about five times the cost of a doing it in house, government cannot work out how to break through the rules and limitations that it has put upon itself, and thus the only option they can see is to throw taxpayers' cash at the usual organisations. In a private company it's not that much different - they contract out most of their IT and pay more, it's just that they don't have to publish the tender, the project estimates, and the project out-turn. Private sector tends (but not always) to be a more intelligent and more demanding customer, but having personally seen some epic private sector IT screwups the outcomes are very mixed.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Or, here's a suggestion...

Government has set the rules for corruption to thrive. All it takes is to change the rules. Labour have the numbers, but likely also they like to enjoy wine and steak.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Or, here's a suggestion...

Wine and steak!

Hurrah!

M Ellis - Exceter

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Or, here's a suggestion...

>(b) government pays scales aren't sufficient to attract and retain the necessary IT professionals to design and deliver a system,

It's been a decade since I abandoned the UK workforce for the west coast - do Fujitsu etc all now pay salaries to compete with FAANG ?

Perhaps I should have stayed ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Or, here's a suggestion...

@Like a badger

Having transition from Public Sector to private not that long ago, I expected the Private sector business to be a slick organised money making machine.

What I found was that this big business is even more of a basket case than the public sector organisation I moved from.

I was surprised, nae, shocked but I'm paid double for the same work so I'm not going back.

I have been told this is not unique by others.

[ComicalEngineer]

Re: Or, here's a suggestion...

The government does not want people (employees) on the books because then they would have to have Civil Service pensions, the great NI circle plus will need offices, admin support etc etc.

Which assumes that HMRC could actually recruit numbers of suitable people at Civil Service pay rates which are typically 2/3 of what you can get even under IR35.

Then there is the fact that if HMRC employ people directly then they have no-one else to blame for the inevitable cock-ups, and a government minister or senior civil servant might have to fall on his sword.

Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister were actually documentaties.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Or, here's a suggestion...

Government could have created a state controlled company to get around that. Easy and they've done that before for other purposes.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Or, here's a suggestion...

If they build it, how will they be able to get their share of brown envelopes?

[lordminty]

Legacy technology...

"NPS currently operates on a legacy technology estate with limited modularity and scalability. HMRC's future ambition is to transition towards a more agile, service-oriented architecture"

What could possibly go wrong?

Everything.

[RobDog]

Make them an offer

Reckon they’d pay cash…?

[Andy3]

£500m won't even touch the side. In fact that's just the package of sweeteners on offer to invite companies who will no doubt string the process out forever while demanding ever mote cash.

[David Hicklin]

Maybe it was a typo and then meant £500b, after all the two letters b and m are very close to each other on the keyboard

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

No mention of steak and wine yet!!

[itzumee]

No doubt stating the obvious but

surely it's NIPS and not NPS?

[BadRobotics]

It can't be any worse...

Than this...I called HMRC about a NI voluntary payment I had made two years ago which hadn't been attributed to my pension eligibility.

The HMRC call centre people were very helpful and found the payment and placed it on my account.

He then mentioned it would take up to 52 weeks to appear on my Stae Pension page!