https://dataingovernment.blog.gov.uk/all-service-assessments-and-self-certification/hmrc/payrolling-benefits-in-kind-alpha/
Payrolling Benefits in Kind - Alpha Assessment
The Benefits in Kind Payrolling service will enable a business to inform HMRC that in the future they will be calculating (and deducting) the appropriate amount of Income Tax due on the Benefits in Kind provided to their employees through the company payroll. The service will enable them to specify for which tax year they are going to tax the benefits through the payroll; and which benefit types (Car, Fuel, and Private Medical Insurance etc.) will be included. The service will also enable the business to specify whether any employees will be excluded or not.
Department / Agency:
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
Date of Assessment:
29 October 2014
Assessment stage:
Alpha Review
Result of Assessment:
Pass
Lead Assessor:
M. O’Neill
Service Manager:
C. Brown
Digital Leader:
M. Dearnley
Assessment Report
The Benefits in Kind Payrolling service has been reviewed against the 26 points of the Service Standard at the end of the Alpha development.
Outcome of service assessment
After consideration the assessment panel have concluded the Benefits in Kind Payrolling service is on track to meet the Digital by Default Service Standard at this early stage of development.
Reasons
The service team were able to clearly set out the core user need which they were working to meet and how their service will meet that user need. They were clear about the benefits that would accrue to users and HMRC. The team were able to set out how they were engaging with users and how users were responding to testing and engagement.
The team were aware of the other related programmes underway within HMRC and could set out how they were working with them to unify user experience and tackle risks of “double taxing”
The team had begun to engage with the Performance Platform team and to identify the metrics required for the service along with the instrumentation for the back end.
The team had begun to engage with Data Guardians and other key assurance people in HMRC to ensure that the service was robust.
Recommendations
The service team should:
- Continue to work closely with the ‘PAYE for Employees’ (company car) exemplar so that they can clearly describe how the joined up user experience will work and be able to demonstrate that it works for users.
- Be able to evidence through robust user research and usability testing the reasons for top slicing the pyramid of users and how the team will encourage transition to the payrolling service for the rest of the user types.
- Ensure that user research involves employees from a range of different employer types, both specific to this service and within the context of the wider ‘Your Tax Account’ services.
- Take ownership of Assisted Digital for the service rather than relying on potential organisation wide support and generic user research. The team has focused on the requirements of larger companies in alpha. They must undertake more user research with small, single and micro companies to understand the specific barriers they might face in using this service and to design appropriate assisted digital support. Proposed support must be put in place to be tested and measured in beta and the team must be able to provide evidence of how this support would meet specific user needs for their service.
- Ensure that the timetable for delivery is set by the agile programme, the current approach to delivery is too dependent on legacy timescales.
- Begin work on the exclusions journey as soon as possible and set out their approach to user research and usability testing in advance.
- Have their cybercrime/threat analysis people review the service as soon as possible.
Digital by Default Service Standard criteria
| Criteria | Passed | Criteria | Passed |
| 1 | Yes | 2 | Yes |
| 3 | Yes | 4 | Yes |
| 5 | Yes | 6 | Yes |
| 7 | Yes | 8 | Yes |
| 9 | No | 10 | No |
| 11 | Yes | 12 | Yes |
| 13 | Yes | 14 | Yes |
| 15 | No | 16 | Yes |
| 17 | No | 18 | Yes |
| 19 | Yes | 20 | Yes |
| 21 | No | 22 | No |
| 23 | No | 24 | No |
| 25 | Yes | 26 | Yes |
