Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 36
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 ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
We asked HMRC whether the age of some of its IT systems were going to make it more difficult to adopt AI. HMRC agreed and considers the “critical thing with AI is making sure you really have a handle on where your data is and that you are managing your data well.” 72 We also asked HMRC about the risk posed by AI to tax evasion and avoidance.73 HMRC told us that “it is a fact of life that bad actors tend to be a bit more agile and a bit more flexible than good actors. You see that right across big organisations, public sector and private sector.” HMRC also agreed that legacy systems are more likely to suffer cyber–attacks.74
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.