HMRC is struggling to improve the way in which it communicates with taxpayers and agents, who report lower levels of satisfaction with the way in which they are treated by the tax authorities, according to the tax authority's annual report into a range of customer service issues
HMRC’s Your Charter Annual Report: April 2013 - March 2014 tracks the department’s progress against a series of measures in a process which began in 2009. According to the latest results, for four of these measures the scores remain below the equivalent scores from March 2011.
In his foreword to the report Ian Young, who is tax policy manager at the ICAEW and chair of the Charter Advisory Committee states: ‘This is a cause for concern and the committee will continue to probe the reasons for this and challenge HMRC over their plans for improvement.’
The worst score was in answer to the question ‘Do all we can to keep the cost of dealing with us as low as possible’, where only 41% of agents think that HMRC are achieving this target. This remains unchanged since 2011 (40%) and has dropped below that figure in the intervening years.
The other low mark from agents comes in relation to ‘Treat you as honest’ where the figure is 48%. The majority (80%) of agents agree that ‘HMRC respects them’, and Young suggests the poor ratings may be due in part to agents dealing with more difficult and complex situations.
There has also been a dip in the number of taxpayers who consider HMRC to act with honesty and integrity, which now stands at 72% compared to 75% the previous year.
Phil Berwick, contentious tax partner at national law firm Irwin Mitchell, said: ‘Individuals, agents and SMEs were all asked the question and all three groups reported a decline in levels of honesty and integrity within HMRC. Being professional and acting with integrity is a key “right” within the Charter and it is unacceptable for HMRC to have such low ratings in this area.’
HMRC’s quarterly performance measures also show the department has not made as much progress as expected in improving its handling of the 55m phone calls it receives annually. While the statistics show 79% of calls are answered, this is well below the 90% figure which was HMRC’s own target for 2013 to 2014, which is itself lower than the 92% figure which is the benchmark for the call centre industry more generally.
Young said: ‘There is certainly no cause for complacency here. The numbers speak for themselves. Millions of taxpayers call HMRC to try to get their tax right. If a fifth of them do not get through, it is difficult to see how this matches the HMRC’s Charter commitment to “Be professional and act with integrity” and, in particular, to “Respond to your enquiries and resolve any problems as soon as we can.”’
There are concerns that HMRC’s use of ‘nudge’ techniques to encourage changes in taxpayer behaviour risked compromising the Charter right to ‘Accept that someone else can represent you,’ by sending letters directly to taxpayers suggesting they might want to review the information supplied on their returns.
‘HMRC has set up a small group to work through the appropriate procedures to ensure that this does not happen so that HMRC can benefit from the latest thinking in behavioural economics while ensuring, at the same time, that taxpayers’ relations with their advisers are not undermined,’ Young said.
The full report is available here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/your-charter-annual-report-summary
