Taxes Office staffing (FOI)

Request

I would be most grateful if you can provide the following information in relation to the States of Jersey Taxes Office.

A

Have many full time, part time and contract employees does it currently employ?

B

Can you please split the above into the number for each section (ie GST / personal / corporate / cashiers / collection / international and so on).

C

In relation to the persons detailed above please can you also advise how many of those individuals have the equivalent of a Table 4 or Table 5 qualification as would be required for a regulated trust company see attached for a list of the relevant qualifications and Tables.

Download Trust Company Qualification Tables 20170421 (size 360kb)

Please can you break down the above information by grade (or if this is too specific) into bands of employees and also the number of employees that fall within each Table, with it being noted that each individual should only be listed once and the highest level of qualifications applied. Please also advise into which section these people are employed (ie GST / personal / corporate / cashiers / collection / international and so on)

Please can you also advise how many are currently studying towards a relevant qualification.

Response

A

The Taxes Office is currently funded (for 2017) to employ 105 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff of which nine are funded to work on specific activities to modernise the Taxes Office and taxes system, which are known internally as transformation projects. 87 staff were in post at the end of March 2017.

Of the above, 10 FTE posts are currently filled by staff working on a part-time basis. Due to the significant investment in the transformation projects, the Taxes Office currently employs a number of agency workers covering vacancies: 11 staff as at 31 March 2017.

B

The Comptroller of Taxes deploys his resources flexibly to meet seasonal priorities. Broadly speaking however, over any year, about 50% of tax officers will have worked on the assessment and collection of personal income tax; about 25% on business taxes (mainly income tax and GST); about 15% in tax policy, international and corporate administration work and about 10% in the taxes transformation team which is overseeing the modernisation of the Taxes Office and the tax system. A number of senior managers and clerical staff routinely operate across the range of the office’s work and have been apportioned appropriately.

Numbers employed may increase as new business cases relating to transformation and other activities are under consideration.

C

The Taxes Office does not hold information on its staff qualifications in the form requested. However, the most recent professional capability survey carried out indicates that 14 staff have qualifications listed in Table 4, and 10 have qualifications listed in Table 5 of the JFSC’s guidance notes relating to Trust Company Businesses. A further nine staff are studying for listed qualifications.

Historically, in common with most tax administrations, the Jersey Taxes Office has trained its staff in-house without external accreditation. More recently, externally accredited qualifications have increasingly been made available for tax officers and the Taxes Office now depends more heavily on externally provided and accredited tax training.

The breakdown of qualification information by grade is not provided as it is considered that this would allow for individuals to be identified and constitute the release of personal data. As such this information is exempt under Article 25 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

Exemptions applied

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.