ATT's Intended Submission on HMRC Service Standards

Earlier this year, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) opened an inquiry into HMRC Customer Service. Due to the timings of the announcement of the General Election, it was not possible to submit our evidence to the Public Accounts Committee before Parliament was prorogued on 24 May. We are sharing the ATT's intended submission now to inform the current debate on HMRC service levels.

Our members continue to experience significant problems with HMRC’s performance. We regularly receive reports of agents waiting at least 40 minutes for phones to be answered, poor quality or meaningless advice on webchat and long delays in getting answers to post. While we welcome the recent additional funding provided for HMRC, there will inevitably be a substantial lead time before improvements can be made. Our members would be keen to do more online with HMRC, but there are significant gaps in HMRC’s digital services and even where services do exist, agents do not always have access to the full range of digital services available to taxpayers. 

Following the dissolution of Parliament on 30 May, the Committee will be disbanded and all of its inquiries closed. It will be for the successor committee (once appointed following the General Election) to determine its future programme, including whether or not it wishes to resume any of its predecessor’s inquiries.