I am pleased to present the 2021–22 annual review for the State Revenue Office Victoria.
In responding to the many challenges of the past three years, we’ve needed to be more adaptable and agile than ever, and I am pleased to note that we have continued that responsiveness this year. As we have transitioned away from a focus on the delivery of covid support, we’ve managed our core work of providing quality revenue management services effectively, as well as delivering on some key government policy commitments.
The year in review
We implemented the government’s new Victorian Homebuyer Fund, a shared equity home ownership scheme which will see more than 3000 Victorians become homeowners. We also commenced the administration of the mental health and wellbeing surcharge, which came into effect from 1 January 2022, and which will deliver more than $850M of additional funding to support Victoria’s mental health systems.
Additionally we:
- collected $25.8B in revenue, which continues to fund government services and priorities
- provided expert advice on tax technical matters to customers through the delivery of 1288 private rulings
- continued to deliver high-quality customer service, including by responding to 290,031 phone calls, the vast majority of which were answered in under five minutes, and handling 44,810 emails from customers.
It’s been a significant year for developments in the technology we use to deliver our services. We aim to provide our taxpayers with easy to use, consistent and high-performing systems to make their engagement with our services as helpful as possible. In 2021, we commenced our four-year program to modernise our Revenue Management Systems. This is a major and transformative commitment, with 25 revenue lines across a range of existing legacy systems to be replatformed. Across 2021-22 we have made significant progress towards this transformation, including commencing work on customer relationship management and case management platforms, and implementing our first customer-facing contact management system for the Victorian Homebuyer Fund.
In terms of debt management, we took a passive approach to the enforcement of debt recovery during covid to support businesses to recover as quickly as possible. This has resulted in debt exceeding our target of less than 2% of total revenue. We expect that we will improve that situation during the course of 2022–23. Also, due to staff being moved to covid relief activities, other KPIs were also difficult to achieve, but again, this was intentional and will be remedied this current financial year.
Our people
In early 2022 we held our inaugural dedicated service awards. These awards recognised staff for between 10 and 40 years of service to the people of Victoria, and celebrated their ongoing dedication and loyalty. I believe it is a mark of our ongoing excellence as an employer that so many talented people choose to commit to a long career with the SRO.
The results of our annual People Matter Survey were particularly pleasing, with satisfaction and engagement being well above the average of our comparator group.
As always, the quality of our achievements this year reflects the skills and commitment of our people. Through another busy and challenging year, our people have demonstrated their capacity to adapt and innovate, as we continue to respond to new challenges and adjust to new ways of working.
The year ahead
We’ll be delivering some major technology developments and significant Victorian Government initiatives, including preparing for the commencement of the windfall gains tax and Casino tax administration in 2023. We will also be concentrating on reducing debt, ensuring compliance with tax laws, improving our call answering times, reducing any arrears that have accumulated during covid and keeping up our standards with regards to the processing of objections and private rulings.
Finally, I am looking forward to seeing us deliver on our vision to be one of Victoria’s best performing organisations.
Paul Broderick
CEO and Commissioner of State Revenue Victoria