Taxman ignores four million phone calls
Problem has doubled in the space of a year, as self-employed struggle to reach HMRC
MORE than four million calls to the taxman are going unanswered, new figures show, as HM Revenue & Customs concedes the problem is almost twice as bad as previously disclosed.
More than one in 10 callers to HMRC fails to get through to anyone, compared with just over one in 20 a year ago, prompting criticism from MPS that the service is letting down millions of selfemployed people.
The true scale of the problem is even worse than HMRC is prepared to admit, as its audit ignores taxpayers who get an engaged tone when they dial the tax advice helpline.
HMRC’S own figures also reveal that 14 per cent of calls took more than 10 minutes to be answered, though that does not include the time people spend navigating its automated call-handling service, which can add an extra four minutes to the length of a call.
In September, the month before the deadline for paper tax returns, one in five calls took more than 10 minutes to be answered.
This comes despite HMRC’S claims that it has improved its performance following previous criticism.
Meg Hillier, the chairman of Parliament’s public accounts committee, said the HMRC helpline’s performance was “disappointing” and lets down self-employed taxpayers who depend on it.
“There are a lot of people who are self-employed, who do not have a raft of tax advisers and who rely on HMRC for help. Hanging on the phone during the day is difficult to do for a lot of people.
“It is absolutely vital HMRC provides a good service. It is collecting tax on hard-earned money and it needs to make it easier for people to play by the rules. Its telephone service is still an important part of that.”
HMRC has been accused of cutting staff and resources from its helpline as part of a drive towards making taxpayers complete digital tax returns.
Over the past year, 43million people called the HMRC helpline, but more than 10 per cent of calls went unanswered, equivalent to more than 4.3million. In February 2017, just 6 per cent of calls went unanswered.
In 2012, figures from the National Audit Office suggested more than 50,000 calls a day were left unanswered by HMRC, while in 2015 Citizens Advice reported some callers were left on hold for 47 minutes.
HMRC pledged to improve its processes by recruiting extra staff. Although call-handling figures did briefly improve, HMRC’S own statistics show the problem of unanswered calls has worsened again over the past year.
Ms Hillier said: “HMRC has lost a lot of staff but needs to make sure it has enough people to keep maintaining a service.”
There are 4.75million self-employed people in the UK, making up 15 per cent of the workforce, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The public accounts committee has said that in many cases callers are hanging up because of the long waiting times.
MPS have also accused the taxman of “misleading” the public over how long they need to wait to speak to a specialist by failing to include automated message times in how it calculates its figures.
Peter Dowd, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: “It is clear the chronic under-staffing and underresourcing of HMRC over the last eight years is having real consequences on the effectiveness of our tax system and people’s ability to access the financial help and tax expertise they need.”
An HMRC spokesman said: “We have improved our customer service standards enormously over the last two years. Our phone call handling has got better, with the average response time falling from 12 minutes in 2015-16 to below five minutes for the past two years.
“Time in the automated telephony system is valuable because it ensures customers are directed to the right person to deal with their question, or get their question answered through the automated system.”