HMRC service levels – update on Institute work

The Institute regularly discusses HMRC service levels and performance at various HMRC forum meetings, including the highest-level forum meeting, the Representative Body Steering Group (“RBSG”) and also shares member feedback received directly with HMRC. The RBSG is next due to meet in early July after the June meeting was postponed by HMRC. A bespoke meeting on HMRC performance is also being arranged in the next few weeks. Please therefore continue to share your feedback with leontia.doran@charteredaccountants.ie.

Members are also reminded of the importance of reporting issues on the Agent Forum as this is the first place service issues should be reported to HMRC before they will be considered for escalation. The escalation process for issues being experienced sets out the various steps involved. The Agent Forum also contains a useful dashboard showing response times in particular areas. HMRC are planning to remove the dashboard from behind the Agent Forum login in future and make this publicly available to all agents.

HMRC service levels are also a standing item on the agenda of the Northern Ireland Tax Committee (“NITC”). In recent weeks, the Institute contacted HMRC to share some recent feedback based on discussions at recent NITC meetings and specific issues raised by our members.

Although there is an acknowledgment that there has been some improvement in recent months, some tasks (referred to as normally simple and straightforward), are still taking much longer than normal and are experiencing long delays. We specifically raised the following areas with HMRC:-

• Problems with corporation tax filing on 31 March 2022 which resulted in some returns not being filed on time due to issues connecting to HMRC’s systems;
• Long delays in processing self-assessment tax refunds – this issue has been raised on the Agent Forum and is within the Issues Overview Group escalation process. However, we expressed concern that the survival of some businesses is now under threat due to the cash flow pressure experienced from delayed refund in a very difficult economic environment;
• HMRC is taking sometimes a year or more to certify evidence of tax residence in the UK which some contractor businesses require for gross payment status or to claim refunds of sub-contractor tax in other jurisdictions – this is negatively impacting on those businesses from a cash flow perspective.

The Institute has also raised HMRC performance as matter of concern in its annual position paper, the Next Financial Year, since the paper was first published in 2020. This year’s paper is due for publication in the next few weeks. You can read the 2020 and 2021 papers.