Tax staff threaten to strike

STRIKES involving thousands of tax and customs officials could paralyse revenue collection and disrupt the processing of tax returns this summer. Their union is fighting a planned cull of 12,500 jobs in Whitehall.

A blueprint due this month for the merger of the Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise is expected to call for the closure of many smaller Revenue offices.

But the Public and Commercial Services Union, the biggest organiser of Revenue and Customs staff, said: 'We are totally against closures. We cannot rule out industrial action.'

It is understood that the newly merged service, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, will be concentrated into 12 strategic zones. These are based on the nine official English regions that the Government divides the country into for planning and other purposes, plus Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It means there will be fewer offices to which people can turn for advice. The union said: 'It is unacceptable to say, "That's it, folksî to people living a long way from the new centres.'

Under the merger proposals, outlined by Chancellor Gordon Brown last year, the equivalent of 12,500 full-time jobs will be axed from HMRC's payroll of nearly 100,000 by 2008.

The backbench Treasury Select Committee plans to call HMRC executive chairman David Varney, previously chairman of mobile phones group O2, to answer detailed questions about the progress of the merger.