Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 16
16
Accepted
Many taxpayers, especially agents, experience difficulty dealing with HMRC, contrary to its Charter.
Conclusion
The HMRC Charter promises to “provide services that are designed around what [the customer] need[s] to do, and are accessible, easy and quick to use, minimising the cost to [them]”.27 HMRC’s surveys have found a significant proportion of taxpayers do not find it easy to deal with HMRC. In 2023, 71% of large businesses said they found it easy to deal with HMRC, but only 38% of agents found it easy. The proportion of agents saying they found it easy had fallen from 50% in 2019.28 HMRC appoints a customer compliance manager for each large business.29 The manager is expected to build an in–depth knowledge of the business. HMRC says their primary role is to make sure businesses pay the correct amount of tax, at the right time.30
Government Response Summary
The government states the observation is implemented, detailing its current practices for conducting regular customer research, using customer insights in service design, assessing changes against 'Customer Guardrails,' and publishing customer impact assessments in Tax Information and Impact Notes (TIINs).
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
5.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented 5.2 HMRC conducts regular research with customers to understand their needs and perspectives. HMRC’s Government Social Researchers conduct qualitative and quantitative research, including nationally representative surveys, with thousands of customers each year. In 2024-25, HMRC delivered 18 commissioned and 15 in-house social research projects. Additionally, user research is a core activity of HMRC’s digital programmes. In 2024-25 HMRC conducted user research with 1,835 participants. Findings were used to inform design decisions on products and services. 5.3 HMRC currently uses customer and user insight as part of its end-to-end change lifecycle for designing new services or making changes to existing ones. This is a critical aspect of design to ensure the department builds solutions that address customer needs and a foundation for evaluating the impact of the service to identify areas of improvement or new opportunities for innovation. 5.4 As part of its business case process, HMRC assesses formal change against Customer Guardrails, a framework for ensuring customer needs are thoroughly considered. Evidence of identified customer needs, including assessment of impacts on customer costs and benefits, is then recorded through completion of an External Customer Impact Assessment document. This forms part of the documentation required by HMRC governance boards. 5.5 Customer impacts are published in the ‘Summary of Impacts’ section of Tax Information and Impact Notes (TIINs). Where a measure or policy change is driven by customer need, this can be set out in the ‘Background to measure’ or ‘Policy objective’ sections of a TIIN as appropriate.