Sir Jim Harra | |
---|---|
Chief Executive of HM Revenue & Customs | |
Assumed office October 2019 | |
Minister | Sajid Javid Rishi Sunak Nadhim Zahawi Kwasi Kwarteng Jeremy Hunt Rachel Reeves |
Deputy | Angela MacDonald |
Preceded by | Jon Thompson |
Sir James Alan Harra, KCB (born July 1962) [1] is a British civil servant who has been First Permanent Secretary and Chief Executive of HM Revenue and Customs since October 2019,in succession to Sir Jonathan Thompson. [2] [3]
Harra's family are based at Dollingstown in County Down,Northern Ireland. He was educated at Donaghcloney Primary School,Tandragee Junior High School and then Portadown College. He read law at Queen's University,Belfast and then became an inspector of taxes with the Inland Revenue in 1984. [4] [5]
In January 2009,Harra became Director of Corporation Tax and VAT,and then Director of Personal Tax Customer Operations in March 2011,and Director Personal Tax Operations in October 2011. He was Director-General for Business Tax from 2012 to 2016,when he succeeded Edward Troup as Tax Assurance Commissioner. [6] [7] He became Tax Assurance Commissioner and Director General Customer Strategy and Design in October 2016 and was appointed Second Permanent Secretary at HMRC in November 2017. [8] He is also a member of the Board of the department. [9]
In November 2017,Harra appeared on BBC's Panorama programme about VAT fraud. [10]
Harra was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 2015 New Year Honours and a Knight Commander (KCB) of the same order in the 2024 Birthday Honours. [12] [13]
His Majesty's Revenue and Customs is a non-ministerial department of the UK Government responsible for the collection of taxes,the payment of some forms of state support,the administration of other regulatory regimes including the national minimum wage and the issuance of national insurance numbers. HMRC was formed by the merger of the Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise,which took effect on 18 April 2005. The department's logo is the Tudor Crown enclosed within a circle.
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A permanent under-secretary of state,known informally as a permanent secretary,is the most senior civil servant of a ministry in the United Kingdom,charged with running the department on a day-to-day basis. Similar offices,often employing different terms,exist in many other Westminster-style systems and in some other governments. In the United States,the equivalent position is a Deputy Secretary of an executive department,though British permanent secretaries are career civil servants.