HMRC's customer service levels have improved significantly over the last year, reaching their highest levels since 2005, according to figures released by the department ahead of publication of its annual report and accounts next month.
The 2012/13 performance figures show HMRC cleared 85% of post within 15 working days, against a target of 80%. HMRC describes this as its 'best performance ever recorded', and says it is on track to clear 97% of post in 40 days, exceeding the target of 95%.
In comparison, last year HMRC cleared just 66% of post within 15 working days, from a low of 51% the year before.
The current report suggests HMRC is also improving its response to customer phone calls. Over the full year, 75.2% of call attempts were handled successfully, in line with the annual target and a similar performance to the year before (74.4%).
However, HMRC points out that following the recruitment last summer of an additional 1,000 staff to work in its contact centres, from October 2012 to March 2013 the department handled more than 90% of call attempts. HMRC says these are 'some of the best monthly performance figures since 2009', and also mean it met its target of answering 90%t of calls by the end of March 2013 much earlier than planned.
The provisional results show HMRC collected £20.7bn additional revenues from compliance activity in 2012/13, almost £2bn more than its target for the year.
HMRC's performance on handling tax credits and child benefit claims was mixed. UK claims and changes of circumstance were cleared on average in 15.5 days between April 2012 and February 2013, which was well ahead of the target of 22 days.
However, international claims and changes of circumstances reported over the same period took an average of 119.4 days to be sorted, well short of the 92 day target. HMRC says this is largely down to the need to obtain information from abroad to clear backlogs of international child benefit cases.
HMRC also reported that it met the deadline it agreed with the Public Accounts Committee two years ago to resolve 17.9m legacy open PAYE cases by October 2012, and to bring PAYE completely up to date by the end of March 2013.
The balance on corporation tax, PAYE and self-assessment debt fell during 2012/13 by £330m to the lowest level since HMRC was formed.
