HMRC service levels: what improvements are accountants calling for?

Can you tell us when and why was this survey made?

The survey has been running during August and September and partly into October so it’s a fresh set of results. The reason for it being run is that our member feedback has been fairly, fairly negative about some of the HMRC service levels — it’s been nearly a two year period that service levels have not really improved and we were getting more and more feedback from agents that it was really affecting and impacting their clients. So we thought of reaching out again to our members and asking about their findings. In that way, we can also provide feedback across HMRC, and we can let the government know where it will affect the economy. 

What specific challenges are UK accountants facing when trying to work with HMRC services at a basic level, as highlighted in the survey data?

The figure that really stands out is the 52% of respondents saying that HMRC service levels are really impacting on productivity and efficiency for clients. If accountants are overburdened and time-poor they actually stop some of those other investment opportunities running forward. In addition, this also affects the morale and mental wellbeing of practitioners, coming out as frustration for not adding value to their job and just doing an administrative task that should be fairly easy to solve. Their time would be far better spent on actually helping that client and helping their client develop their business to bring cash flow in play.

The survey indicates that 93% of respondents believe that HMRC needs to make significant improvements in various key areas. What are these areas, and why are they crucial for improving the experience of working with HMRC?

There’s three common areas: reduced call waiting times, improvement to call handling, and improved communication. Regarding the latter, HMRC has actually improved some of their communication but there’s still room for improvement. One classic example is when there was an awful lot of communications going out about ‘filling your tax return’ and having 100 days to do so. That has gone out to all taxpayers, whether you filed your tax return or not. And at that time, clients who already filed their tax return were coming back to their accountants and saying ‘have you done this?’ And the response was ‘yes, this is just a blanket email sent to everyone’. So again, this impacts time. 

Regarding the other two areas, call handling systems and call waiting times, they are the areas where we see significant blockages coming through. I’ll give one example and that’s PAYE payments, and allocating these to the correct account. That is something which can’t be done automatically by accountants and they end up having to call HMRC, go through the process on the phone which takes 30 to 45 minutes and then maybe after that, they’re able to solve the payment for one client. If they had access to the system themselves, it would only take five minutes. 

Why do you think HMRC services have not improved so far? Is it because of a lack of staff or the delay in adopting more modern methods of communication or are there any pandemic-related factors that have exacerbated these challenges?

I would rule out the pandemic as one of the factors because I think at this stage businesses should have moved on from pandemic-related issues. I think there’s always a combination of low staffing and challenging recruitment. It’s been difficult to recruit people into those roles and there’s also training. Tax is a complex area, and so you need to train people adequately and that does take time. And lastly, there’s probably sheer volume and how to deal with that and the introduction of new tax policy areas. 

How might these difficulties that accountants have in working with HMRC for tax enquiries result in costing the government money? What is the connection between inefficiencies in HMRC services and financial implications for the government?

I’ll pick an example out and that is VAT registration, which we know has suffered severe delays. Delays cause significant problems because either the business ends up suffering or ends up in some form of difficulty because of the process, or there is an element of risk through to the government that actually some of that tax doesn’t filter across. This is just an example of how tax delays impact the individual business and, ultimately, the government revenue.

Has a similar survey ever been conducted before? I’m just asking to try to understand if there’s other data that could show whether the relationship accountants have with HMRC services has deteriorated over the years?

We do gather information through the use of surveys with our members. This in particular was the first time we’d looked at how productivity has been impacted by HMRC services. We saw a real concern from our members, which has moved on from just slight annoyances and is having quite an impact. 

Following the survey, has there been any response from HMRC?

We have regular discussions with HMRC. We shared with them a lot of feedback and we work with them on suggesting solutions. As any large organisation, they also face constraints on their own part, and we recognise that. It all comes down to improved communication. If they’re having difficulty or concerns around some of the areas they deal with, it’s best to be open and communicate that effectively so that we can all work around this together. 

Are there any specific recommendations or solutions that ACCA or the survey respondents are proposing to address the issues raised in the survey?

Once again, I think it is communication. And actually it revolves around the question of whether or not some of these systems can be opened up to professionally qualified accountants, who are people they can actually trust to help support the UK tax system going forward.