About the Group
Personal Tax, Welfare and Pensions
We work to create a tax and welfare system which supports the government’s goals of deficit reduction, economic growth, and fairness. In doing so, we look after high profile areas including personal taxes, labour markets, welfare, tax administration, pensions, and savings. We also coordinate spending controls for both HM Revenue & Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions. The Group also has a wider role to assess the overall impact of changes made to taxes and benefit on households across the UK.
Our work means we are often at the centre of ministers’ decision making, and we play an important part in the Budget and the Spending Review. Our group works closely with colleagues at HMRC, DWP, and the Prime Minister’s office, and with a wide variety of external stakeholders.
About the Team
Tax Administration, Spending and Reform
The Tax Administration, Spending and Reform (TASR) team is an outstanding, friendly and diverse team of around 20 people based across the London and Darlington offices. We are the Treasury team responsible for supporting HMRC to play its critical role in delivering Government priorities – from raising tax revenue to fund public services, to simplifying the tax system, and tackling tax avoidance and evasion.
TASR’s work is of fundamental importance to the Treasury, the Chancellor, and wider government. We work closely with a wide range of HMRC and HM Treasury teams to deliver tax policy, and we also act as the spending team for HMRC, ensuring that HMRC spending is sustainable and meets the government’s wider objectives.
The team is committed to equality and diversity. We seek to attract diverse, skilled, and impactful people and are keen to encourage applications from candidates with various backgrounds and ranges of experience.
Key Accountabilities
Government policies impact on people’s everyday lives – whether it is how we provide support to households, collect tax revenue, or fund public services.
Great policy making is about understanding what needs to change, what problems need to be solved, and supporting ministers to arrive at a solution. You will need to demonstrate a range of skills, including strong problem-solving skills, the ability to clearly explain your thinking both in writing and in person, and the drive to work with others to overcome challenges.
You don’t need to be a policy professional or have any specific qualifications or experiences to work as a Policy Adviser at HM Treasury. We are looking for people who have the right set of skills for the role, demonstrate our values, and are motivated to come and work with us at the heart of government.
This is an exciting and stretching role within TASR’s Policy Unit. The postholder will work across a range of policy areas to make the tax system simpler and easier to navigate for millions of individuals and businesses.
They will build strong, open relationships with a wide range of HMRC teams through HMT and HMRC’s ‘policy partnership’, working together to solve complex problems while ensuring outcomes are considerate of the bigger picture and aligned with HMT aims.
The role will provide opportunities to gain a confident grasp of core HMT policy skills across tax and spending policy, while honing skills to deliver to tight timelines and manage competing priorities when working across several areas of strong Ministerial and senior interest.
Key accountabilities for this role include:
1. Supporting HMT and HMRC’s reinvigorated work to simplify the tax system following the closure of the Office for Tax Simplification. Work closely with a wide range of colleagues across HMRC and HMT to advise Ministers on proposals for new policies and administrative changes to simplify taxpayers’ experience of navigating the tax system; and to champion and embed tax simplification across the departments’ policymaking.
2. Leading on spending control and policy partnership for two HMRC digital transformation programmes that sit at the heart of the government’s 10-year strategy for tax administration reform. This will involve developing strong knowledge of the programmes; boosting their public and cross-government profiles to ensure the programmes’ benefits are realised; proactively monitoring HMRC’s progress in designing and delivering programmes; and updating Ministers on progress, capturing successes while highlighting and managing potential risks.
3. Collaborating closely with HMRC to develop policies to raise standards in the market for tax advice and protect taxpayers from some of the consequences of bad advice.
4. Working with HMRC to provide high quality advice and briefing for Ministers, Special Advisers and press office, facilitating effective responses to policy problems and, where appropriate, the successful announcement of policies at Budgets and fiscal events.
5. Work flexibly to support wider team and departmental objectives, supporting seniors to stay up-to-date on HMRC priorities and support HMRC to respond to varied fast-paced requests for their policy expertise and delivery capability.
6. Contribute to making the team, department and Darlington office great places to work, proactively engaging in team discussions and corporate activities and supporting team members and wider peers.