Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 2
23rd Report - The cost of the tax system
Published 30 Apr 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee The cost of the tax system All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Taxpayers’ trust in HMRC is falling. Trust in a tax authority is vital for the authority to effectively discharge its role as it affects the willingness of taxpayers to engage and pay the correct amount of tax on time. HMRC says that trust has to be at the centre of everything that it does. In July 2020 HMRC and HM Treasury said they wanted to gradually increase the trust of taxpayers in HMRC. But since then, trust in HMRC has fallen among large businesses, small businesses, agents and individuals. HMRC’s customer charter promises to provide services that are designed around what the customer needs to do, and are accessible, easy and quick to use. 4 HMRC recognises that the lower service levels it has provided in recent years have affected levels of trust. The proportion of agents who reported finding it easy to deal with tax issues reduced from 50% in 2019 to 38% in 2023. recommendation a. HMRC should work with taxpayers and their representatives to understand why trust in HMRC is falling and what it can do to quickly address the decline. b. HMRC should publish the concerns it has heard and the actions it is taking to address these, as a first step to improving trust.
From: Public Accounts Committee, 23rd Report - The cost of the tax system (HC 645), 30 April 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 18 September 2025.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it "agrees with the Committee's recommendation" on each of the report's recommendations, and reports that several are already implemented while others carry target dates.
- On simplification, the government will publish HMRC's Transformation Roadmap in summer 2025, which "will include the metrics HMRC will use to report progress".
- On trust, the government agrees with both recommendations and describes them as "Recommendation implemented", citing annual customer surveys, complaints data and focus groups.
- On compliance productivity, it says HMRC "will recruit an additional 5,500 compliance staff by March 2030", alongside other measures to close the tax gap.
- On legacy IT, HMRC "will write to the Committee" on its remediation plans, forecast cost and expected savings, with a target implementation date of September 2025.