A BOLTON tax advice service looks set to be axed.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) inquiry centre at Stone Cross House in Churchgate is one of 281 across the country planned for closure next year as part of a radical shake-up of services.

The move puts up to 10 Bolton jobs at risk and 1,300 nationally, although HMRC said it planned to redeploy the staff elsewhere.

It wants to replace “face-to-face” tax advice with an online and telephone service as well as home visits in an effort to save £13 million a year.

HMRC said it will be introducing a pilot scheme in the North East in June and if everything goes to plan, it will seek a decision from Government ministers to introduce the new model across the UK in February, 2014.

An HMRC spokeswoman said: “HMRC is discussing the imp-acts of these chan-ges with staff in inquiry centres and unions, and will do everything possible to redeploy inquiry centre staff within HMRC, or help them to find another role in the civil service.

“Almost 1,000 of the 1,300 staff employed in our 281 inquiry centres are already based in areas where HMRC has other offices.”

Paul Barnsley, the national representative for HMRC in the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) union, told The Bolton News: “Firstly we can see absolutely no justification for closing inquiry centres.

“There are 2.5 million inquiries a year from some of the most vulnerable people on issues like tax credits. Pensioners especially like to have a face-to-face service.”

“We’re very worried about redundancies among our members.

“HMRC says it wants to redeploy people, but there needs to be somewhere to redeploy them. We’ll be fighting these closures because this will be a disaster for HMRC and a disaster for the public.”