Just over half of taxpayers were getting through to an advisor in April 2024, which has now increased to 85% in December.

December saw just 1.86m phone calls to HMRC, the least for the 2024-25 tax year so far, compared with 2.1m in December 2023, showing the mission to push taxpayers online is beginning to work as the number of webchats more than doubled year on year.

An HMRC spokesperson said: ‘We’ve made huge improvements to our service standards, with call wait times down by 17 minutes since April last year.

‘At the same time, more than 80% of customers are satisfied with our digital services, with more and more people using them to quickly and easily manage their tax affairs.’

While HMRC continues to persuade taxpayers to use online services, millions still opt to phone HMRC to resolve their issues.