New report reveals that HM Revenue & Customs is so bad at dealing with the public that it’s not able to collect tax properly…
We all know how frustrating bad service is – as a customer it can waste your time, cost you money and cause you all sorts of frustrations. So (unusually) I find myself sympathising with the plight of HM Treasury this week, which could well be missing out on much-needed tax revenue, simply because HMRC is proving so awful at customer service.
In fact, a report by the cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has found that around half of calls to HMRC – the only way you can contact HMRC customer service – went unanswered in the early part of this year.
What’s more, more than a third of calls to HMRC in 2014 were cut off, while the average waiting time was almost 11 minutes.
The Chair of the PAC, Labour MP Meg Hillier, said: “HMRC must rapidly improve its customer service, previously described by the PAC as abysmal and now even worse – to the extent it could be considered a genuine threat to tax collection.”
These are pretty punchy words, and the PAC report has suggested that HMRC should “produce a detailed plan setting out how and when it will provide an acceptable standard of customer service”.
Relief work…
Yet while HMRC is under increasing pressure to deliver on customer service, the tax picture for the consumer is more complicated than ever. The UK tax code runs to an astonishing 21,000 pages, and there are estimated to be more than 1,100 different individual tax relief schemes according to the independently run Office for Tax Simplification. No wonder self-assessment tax returns can be so daunting, even if HMRC reckons there are only 400 different tax relief options…
To this, the PAC says: “HMRC should identify which reliefs it considers require monitoring and evaluation and publish this information to enable Parliament to decide which reliefs may require further scrutiny or legislative change.”
All this suggests that the tax structure in this country is horrendously over-complicated and that there’s plenty of work to be done by both Parliament and HMRC to help steer those of us committed to at least attempting to pay our fair share through the complex minefield.
But the future’s brighter…
HMRC’s response to the PAC’s report is that it is addressing these criticisms already, having recruited 3,000 new staff to help address its service problems. It also pointed out that, despite squeezes on its administrative budget over the past five years, it’s managed to improve its tax take performance – It collected £166.95 for every £1 spent on administration in 2014-15, up from £138.14 in 2010-11.
The moral of the story? Tax is tricky, and you might feel frustrated if you have to deal with HMRC customer service at the moment, but fingers crossed that the situation is getting better…