How accountants say HMRC can improve its performance

HMRC’s annual report showed it is struggling to maintain good service levels. Here we look at what accountants believe can be done to fix this.

The department has said that continuously high volume of repayment claims, ongoing IT issues due to upgrades and visa processing for the Homes for Ukraine scheme have all created additional pressures.

The main issues include:

• Average call waiting times have increased to 13-15 minutes.

• Those on hold for more than 60 minutes remain at 60% in comparison to the 15% target pre-covid. 

• HMRC are also slower to respond and action written and emailed correspondence. 65% of correspondence was dealt with within 15 working days, but June this dropped to 59%.

Given these current issues, what can HMRC do to improve its performance and how can it rebuild trust in agents and customers?

Here accountants across the UK share their experiences and views.

HMRC must digitise more processes to improve service provision

Kevin Parsons, MD, Cooper Associates Accountants

COVID had a huge impact on all businesses and HMRC was no exception. Though there are new systems and processes in place to deal with the ‘new normal’, many people are still experiencing difficulties communicating with HMRC.

When it comes to responding to letters sent by post, we are experiencing delays of more than six months. Phone waiting times continue to be long, with some calls being cut off after long delays. Once this happens, there is no way of reconnecting the call and the user is forced to start again – at the back of the queue

Next steps: Demand is only going to increase in the coming months with significant changes to the Making Tax Digital regime in April 2024, for example. More initiatives such as the improvement in the Client Agent Authorisation process, replacing the old paper ’64-8 forms’, would only be beneficial.

Verdict: Digitise more processes to speed up and improve service provision moving forwards.

HMRC needs to improve communication around potential delays

John Hiddleston, Associate Director, Tax Advisory, Azets

We perceive there has been a significant improvement in call waiting times. While waiting time may have been 40 minutes or more during the peak of the pandemic, it is now around 20 minutes.

However, HMRC is still taking an unacceptably long time to respond to a substantial proportion of correspondence. For example, we have one client that is still waiting for a residence certificate more than six months after the request was made. Another client has been waiting several months for HMRC clearance to complete the winding up of a deceased estate, which is particularly tough as what is an emotionally sensitive time. This client is now considering a formal complaint about HMRC’s performance. Delays on VAT registration are also causing challenges to clients.

Next steps: We would like to see HMRC make substantial improvements to its response time to correspondence, with better communication about whether and why it is unable to respond in a reasonable timescale. We also wonder whether HMRC could automate more processes to help reduce delays and improve service.

Verdict: There have been improvements in call waiting times but there continues to be delays with correspondence response times. HMRC need to improve communications around this and automate more processes to help reduce delays

There should be consequences for HMRC’s errors and mistakes

Gemma Ingall, Client Manager, A4G Accountants

Our experience with HMRC has been rather poor. For instance:

• The time to process refunds. We have one particular case where HMRC took 10 months to process a clients’ £11,000 refund.

• We have had PAYE inspectors calling and making us guess which clients they were calling about because they can’t give details on the phone yet demanded we gave answers. HMRC arranges meetings then cancels due to an error on their side.

• We were advised on 30 March of an outstanding debt from 2016 and the HMRC caller confirmed that no correspondence has been sent out about this debt.

• We sent a S48 claim in February 2022 for a £124K refund. It stated in July 2022 the letter hasn’t been dealt with and won’t be until 13 October 2022.

Next steps: HMRC needs to deal with correspondence much quicker. Post can sometimes take over 6 months to look at and it can then get lost. We would also like to see them process refunds quicker.

We also believe that consequences for people making mistakes should be in place as several mistakes are made by HMRC but there are no consequences.

Verdict: HMRC needs to speed up correspondence responses. HMRC should also issue penalties for HMRC staff who have made errors as there are never any consequences for HMC errors.  

Improve resources for call waiting times, improve consistency of advice and provide realistic timeframes

Stacey Rice, Client Services Payroll Specialist, Abbeygate Accountancy

We experience many issues with HMRC such as:

• Waiting times averaging 30mins.

• Increased requests for things to be put in writing such as disputes, appeals etc but it doesn’t accept recorded post.

• Major delays in issuing refunds but it sends weekly chaser letters for outstanding monies.

To improve performance, there are several areas HMRC needs to improve on including clearance. When we take on a new client, we have to register for every additional service which is very time-consuming. At the same time, HMRC will send us letters about these clients but discuss any further details due to ‘incomplete’ forms. If it is sending letters to us, it already knows it is us.

It also needs to update the dashboard with live figures in real-time. At the moment, re-running payroll and sending amended RTI can still take up to two weeks.

Next steps: We’d like to see:

• More resources allocated to reduce call waiting times.

• Better consistency: there are many occasions where we’ve been told different things by different staff members about the same query.

• Realistic timeframes. Currently, timeframes for queries and issues do not match reality.

Verdict: Improve resources for call waiting times, improve consistency of advice and provide realistic timeframes.

Annie Makoff is a freelance journalist and editor.