Revenue Jersey administers and collects over £1,200 million in taxation revenue each year.
Background
Estimates for 2025 taxation revenues are shown in Exhibit 1.
Impôts are administered by the Agent of the Impôts (the Head of Jersey Customs). Stamp Duty is administered by the Judicial Greffier. Revenue Jersey administers the other taxes and is also responsible for collecting Social Security and Long-Term Care Contributions. In addition, Revenue Jersey has a role in ensuring that Jersey’s international tax exchange agreements are administered effectively and has a role in supporting the Treasury in forecasting income each year.
Revenue Jersey has a stated aim to be among the best of smaller tax administrations.
The approved budgets for Revenue Jersey for 2025-2029 are shown in Exhibit 2.
Revenue Transformation Programme
The Revenue Transformation Programme (RTP) Phases 3 and 4 are major projects that are intended to enable adaptations for digital tax systems to take account of changes in tax legislation including the adoption of independent taxation, changes in respect of the prior-year basis and the requirement for automatic exchange of tax information internationally.
Total funding of £20.7 million has been approved for these two phases which are planned for completion by the end of 2027.
Pillar 2
Jersey is implementing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Pillar 2 reforms, reinforcing its commitment to international tax cooperation and introducing a global minimum tax for large multinational enterprises. To support these reforms, the Government is investing in a new IT system, delivered in phases. This includes a secure portal for multinational groups and tax agents to register, file returns, and make payments, alongside tools for Revenue Jersey to manage new tax types, monitor compliance, and exchange data internationally.
Funding has been included in the Budget for 2026-2029 as shown in Exhibit 3.
Scope
The audit’s overall objective is to evaluate how well Revenue Jersey uses its resources to manage risk, and to ensure it delivers an efficient, effective and economic service.
The audit will cover Revenue Jersey’s business as usual activities as well as the use of growth funding for major projects.
The audit will not consider tax policies and tax policy development.
Audit approach
This audit will use a:
- result-oriented approach (is Revenue Jersey meeting its objectives and ambitions?); and
- system-oriented approach (are robust systems / processes in place for Revenue Jersey to support performance and value for money?).
The audit will commence with an initial documentation request. The findings of the document review will be followed up by interviews with key officers and potentially with other stakeholders.
The audit will include benchmarking costs and service performance against relevant comparable services in other jurisdictions.
The review will commence in February 2026.
The detailed work will be undertaken by affiliates engaged by the C&AG.
Audit criteria
To assess relative performance during our audit, we will use the following criteria.
Leadership and governance
Has Revenue Jersey established and put into practice high quality systems, policies and procedures to cover:
- leadership arrangements and communication requirements?
- roles, responsibilities, and authorities?
- management of performance and risk? and
- monitoring and reporting which leads to continuous improvement?
Information for decision making
Does Revenue Jersey have and use high quality information to assess its performance and make management decisions?
Prioritisation of activity
Does Revenue Jersey have a mature approach to using risk assessment and setting risk appetite, across different tax categories, to enable it to make decisions about levels of:
- compliance activity:
- Promote – helping taxpayers to get it right first time
- Prevent – tools such as online filing to make it easier, and building in checks to test that data matches expectations; and
- Respond – intervention with individual taxpayers and focus on getting it right in future; and
- activity to reduce: fraud; and error?
Value for money
Does Revenue Jersey have an accurate picture of the extent to which it is delivering value for money? Does it assess and act on intelligence about its relative position, against other jurisdictions and, where relevant, against the International Monetary Fund Tax Administration Diagnostic Assessment Tool, regarding:
- productivity and efficiency – for example operating costs as a
percentage of revenue? - compliance costs as percentage of added yield?
- enforcement costs as a percentage of income from fines and penalties?
- resources used in resolving errors?
- how the level and types of complaints compare, including from businesses? and
- the likely cost / benefit ratio of enhanced digitalisation?
