I am advised by the Revenue Commissioners that the introduction of the Local Property Tax (LPT), which amounts to the largest extension of the self-assessment system in the history of the State, represents a significant administrative challenge for Revenue. As a new service that will have exceptional temporary pressures at particular stages of its initial implementation it is difficult to predict the level of contact that will arise during its introduction and, consequently, the resource required to handle queries from members of the public. The Expenditure Report for 2013, which was published in December last, makes a provision of €25.9m in 2013 for the implementation of LPT. The total cost of LPT to the end of March 2013 is approximately €6.6m.
Revenue considered a number of options for the provision of a phone call service to handle queries from members of the public. Revenue decided to use a mix of existing staff, staff from the redeployment resource panel, temporary Clerical Officers (TCOs) and external resources to deal with Local Property Tax. At the end of March 2013, Revenue had a total of 155 full-time equivalent staff assigned to LPT, comprising 125 permanent and 30 TCOs. The permanent staff resource was filled through the internal redeployment of existing staff and the recruitment of a total of 29 staff from the Public Service Resource panel. Revenue is currently in the process of recruiting an additional 25 TCOs to support the introduction of LPT.
Following an open competitive tendering process, the contract for call services was awarded on the basis that the service provider would
1. Deliver information and assistance to taxpayers having difficulty understanding LPT and completing their returns and making payments.
2. Assist taxpayers to navigate a new online system for filing returns and payments for LPT.
3. Escalate calls to a Revenue call service where taxpayer specific information is required to resolve the call.
4. Make outbound calls to taxpayers with information on their LPT queries where requested by Revenue to do so.
5. Provide telephony infrastructure and supports to allow direct transfer to Revenue.
6. Support services and resources including account management and quality control.
The service is provided on a 9 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday basis. The service provider has the ability to scale operations up or down in response to call volumes. The service must meet Revenue customer service standards and the industry ISO standards and Revenue has provided training and training material to ensure that the standards are achieved. An Irish language service is provided. The necessary confidentiality and security procedures have been implemented as agreed.
The service commenced on 7 March 2013 and call volumes of 108,100 were handled up to 16 April 2013. Regular operational management, reporting and review meetings were provided for in the contract. Reporting arrangements and quality monitoring arrangements were agreed and are being delivered. The nature of the contract is that the cost will depend on the volume of calls handled. In accordance with the relevant Government decision, the Revenue Commissioners publishes quarterly lists of payments over €20,000 and payments made under this contract will be included in future lists. Revenue has advised that a total €67,000 was spent on external service delivery of call centre services in Q1 2013.
The external service delivery of peak call handling in respect of the LPT provides a flexible, scalable response to an unpredictable demand. It also provides assurance that the introduction of LPT will not adversely affect Revenue’s capacity to deliver for the Exchequer in relation to their overall priority of maintaining and improving levels of compliance across the range of taxes and duties.
