HMRC was willing to let telephone helplines ‘collapse’, MPs said.
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The UK tax authority “wanted to degrade” its telephone helplines and was “willing to let them fail” in its push to drive taxpayers online, influential party MPs have concluded.
HM Revenue and Customs “was too quick to restrict telephone services before it could ensure that alternative digital services were fully operational,” Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee reported on Wednesday.
“All[HMRC’s]customers have a legal obligation to pay their tax so it has a responsibility to engage with them,” said Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. “If I were a teacher marking HMRC homework I would give it ‘could do better’ or ‘needs improvement’.
The tax authority began its transition to digital services in 2003 with plans to provide online customer support, free hotlines for vulnerable individuals and people with complex needs.
But demand for the helplines remains high. The National Audit Office’s spending watchdog, published last May, said taxpayers would collectively spend almost 800 years on HMRC in 2022-23 – more than double the number in 2019-20.
Sir Jim Harrah, chief executive of HMRC, said the committee’s claims were “totally unfounded”. The tax authority has reduced the call waiting time to 11 minutes compared to 28 minutes in April 2024.
He added: “We are always available to answer the phone for those who need further assistance. At the same time, more than 80 percent of customers are satisfied with our digital services.
In their report, the MPs said HMRC should “restore the call waiting time target as a key performance measure” and “ensure customers are given an accurate estimate of call waiting times in real time”.
The report urged the tax authority to scrap its policy of cutting off phone calls when a customer is on hold for 70 minutes. In the year In 2023-24, HMRC intercepted more than 43,000 calls in this way, a six-fold increase on the previous year.
In the year In March 2024, HMRC dropped plans to drastically cut helplines with two days’ warning after a response from professional bodies.
The MPs called on HMRC to take further action to reduce its debt to the agency. The tax authority’s debt balance will reach £43.9bn in March 2023, up from around £15bn in the five years before the outbreak.
The government has announced £303mn of extra funding in 2023-24 to help HMRC manage tax debts, but the balance will be reduced by just 2% – or £900mn – in March 2024.
