A report by the new Treasury Select Committee has been highly critical of the HMRC’s performance.
MP’s have identified lack of resources as a contributory factor in the tax authorities ability to offer an acceptable standard of customer service.
Telephone and postal response times came under particularly heavy fire, with report criticising HMRC’s telephone response times and unacceptable delays in answering post.
Telephone response times
For example in 2010-11, pitiful 48% of calls received by HMRC helplines were answered, with callers waiting an average of two minutes and nearly four minutes in peak periods to speak to an advisor.
Disgruntled taxpayers find themselves with hefty call charges given that they are asked to contact the department via expensive 0845 numbers. This is particular onerous as most customers now use mobile phones.
It was pointed out that taxpayers would pay much less if HMRC were to switch to the less expensive 0345 system.
Post delays
This is a particular problem I have noted myself. Postal response times of up to 2 or 3 months are not uncommon.
The report commented – ‘the evidence we have received…suggests that long delays in responding to post at HMRC are endemic. This is unacceptable.’
Reduced resources
This was absolutely inevitable and one can only feel sorry for the remaining HMRC staff who are left to bear the brunt of the seismic reduction in resources, which the coalition have ironically titled “efficiency savings”.
The committee specifically considered the impact of these so called efficiency savings and assessed whether these had impacted on service levels, despite HMRC denials.
The report stated that there was ‘near unanimity among our witnesses that the efficiency savings at HMRC have been partly responsible for the decline in service standards and, therefore, that HMRC’s claim to have delivered £1.1 billion of savings “without overall negative impact on performance” lacked credibility.’
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