The department has published its Your Charter annual report, covering the period April 2015 to March 2016. This is the first to be produced under the new charter committee, the successor to the previous charter advisory committee, which is now established as a sub-committee of the HMRC board.

Commenting on the customer survey results Edward Troup, HMRC executive chair, said they ‘show that while customers have a substantial level of trust in HMRC’s integrity, they are frustrated with some aspects of our customer service.

‘Agents, who have more regular dealings with us, are generally the least positive. While the survey fieldwork was carried out against a backdrop of poor performance at the beginning of the year, the results do illustrate the challenge of building customer confidence and trust.’

Under the section asking whether HMRC provides ‘a helpful, efficient and effective service’, just 26% of agents said the time taken is acceptable, compared to 56% of individuals and 63% of small business respondents.

Less than two thirds of agents felt HMRC was approachable (62%), treated customers fairly (60%) or treated customers as honest (62%). While only 59% of individuals saw HMRC as approachable, they scored the department more highly on fairness (75%) and being seen as honest (78%).

Agents reported issues with finding information from HMRC, with only 35% saying this was easy, and just 17% agreed that ‘HMRC is efficient and do not waste money.’ Individuals were more likely to view HMRC as efficient (35%), as were small businesses (33%).

The Your Charter information has been revised under the new committee to be shorter and easier to read, and the survey questions have been overhauled, meaning it is not possible to make comparisons with responses from earlier questionnaires for the period 2008 -2015 as the sample structure, approach and definition of the customer groups have all been substantially changed. Going forward, the Charter committee says among its priorities for 2016 -17 will be testing how HMRC’s performance measures provide insight into their success in meeting Your Charter commitments, in particular their work to deal with complaints quickly and fairly and how they can demonstrate they are learning from them to reduce the number and improve handling.

It also plans to investigate the move to digital tax accounts, and will also assess how HMRC is managing the risks of the transformation to a digital environment based in a smaller number of offices, including how security of information is maintained, and staff are supported and trained to meet the new challenges and continue to deliver efficient and effective customer service to all their customers, including tax credits taxpayers. It will also look at the handling of the transition and support for taxpayers during the migration to Universal Credit.

Your Charter annual report 2015 -16 is here.