HMRC’s poor quality digital services are not adequately meeting the needs of taxpayers and cannot support those with complex tax affairs, say leading audit, tax and business advisory firm, Blick Rothenberg.
Robert Salter, a Director at the firm, said: “HMRC’s poor quality digitalisation is causing woe for taxpayers.
Early in 2024 the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said that HMRC’s customer services must be sufficiently resourced to meet service standards until its digital services adequately address the needs of taxpayers and their agents.”
He added: “The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW)/ Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) joint report published in December 2024 shows that their digital services still do not address those needs. HMRC’s webchats only appear to connect 49% of the time and the resolution rates of queries submitted in this format is only 21% even when a connection is established.”
Robert said: “On top of this, some of HMRC’s online forms are so badly designed that they create additional work, for taxpayers, their agents, and for HMRC. I and many other advisors have been complaining about these forms for years, so far only the R&D disclosure form has seen improvement.”
He added: “We also recently heard of a lady whose tax assessment was wrong because her state pension was accounted for incorrectly in the ‘simplified assessment’ of her tax liability which HMRC actually produced automatically. If the figures for income received from the Government cannot be reflected correctly in HMRC’s assessments, it does not reflect at all well on the quality of HMRC’s digitalisation programme.”
Robert said: “Digitalisation when done well may help with mundane and time-consuming tasks, but given the increasing complexity of many taxpayers’ tax affairs – and the increasing complexity of the UK tax code – some issues require talking directly to a person to resolve. Unfortunately, HMRC have sometimes closed down their phone lines so that they can transfer those staff to address backlogs in the system, leaving taxpayers with no choice but to use their unreliable webchats.”
He added: “The restricted access to HMRC telephone helplines is also a problem for the many people who resort to telephoning because they cannot get a response from HMRC within a reasonable timescale. Over a third of the telephone calls made to HMRC are progress chasing or calling to correct HMRC errors. Eliminating such calls though improved response time would save HMRC approximately £36m per year.”
Robert said: “Government funding could improve the quality of HMRC’s digitalisation, but traditional communication methods must be maintained and improved to ensure customers, especially those with complex tax affairs, get the best possible service.”
