This Institute regularly engages with HMRC on matters of interest for our members. In recent months, the focus of meetings has been on the various COVID-19 supports, post EU exit, HMRC service levels including the poor performance of the agent dedicated line (“ADL”) and HMRC’s approach to collection of debt to name but a few.

Set out below are key messages/information for members including those from a recent bespoke meeting on the ADL.

The Institute was also represented at HMRC’s first Virtual Stakeholder Conference which took place in April. On the agenda were topics such as Making Tax Digital, current consultations, HMRC’s compliance work and the revised Charter.

Representative body steering group

This is the highest-level forum meeting of the Professional Bodies with meetings taking place approximately five times annually and bespoke meetings held on an ad hoc basis. A bespoke meeting is due to be held in July on HMRC’s approach to collection of outstanding tax debt. Members are encouraged to share their feedback on this prior to the meeting next month.

Key messages from recent meetings, including a recent meeting on the reduced performance of the ADL, are as follows:-

• From Monday 14 June HMRC is restoring priority access to the ADL with calls expected to be answered within 10 minutes;
• HMRC recognises the reduced performance which continues to be experienced in respect of the ADL and has provided more information on the support agents can expect;
• HMRC confirmed that there is no set number of clients an agent can discuss in one call to the ADL, if they are able to successfully get through;
• However this depends on the capacity of the call handler who may be required to take a break as they are only able to spend an hour at a time on the phone due to health and safety requirements;
• When a call is answered, the HMRC call handler should now confirm with the agent how much time is left before their next break to allow the agent to prioritise queries;
• If an adviser does not offer this information, agents should request it so that they can maximise their time on the call;
• HMRC is also asking agents to be “pragmatic” in what can be achieved in the time available and to ensure that the information requested is not available via other sources such as where’s my reply or SA302 requests; and
• HMRC has asked call handlers to use their discretion when taking calls and recognise that agents are likely to have waited sometime to get through to an adviser.

Virtual Communications Group

This group meets monthly. Matters discussed at the most recent meeting included the following:

• A reasonable excuse form is now available on GOV.UK for late CJRS claims;
• the current 14-day deadline for making CJRS claims for the previous month will be changing to 17 days but it is not clear when this will take effect; and
• 2020/21 Self-Assessment returns now include a section on recovering overpaid CJRS and SEISS grants – the need for HMRC to provide guidance to assist agents with the checking they are required to do to complete this from a professional standards viewpoint was discussed.

Wealthy external stakeholder forum

Forum meetings are attended by Alan Gourley, Chair of the NI Tax Committee. Minutes of meetings are available on GOV.UK. This forum has asked us to share a recent briefing on EIS company failures and investor compliance. We understand that the first series of letters on this matter began to issue last month.

Powers and safeguards evaluation forum

In February, HMRC published its evaluation report on HMRC’s Implementation of Powers, Obligations and Safeguards introduced since 2012. The report’s publication is the outcome of the work of the Powers and Safeguards Evaluation Forum to which this Institute and its members contributed feedback.

HMRC have made 21 commitments to address the findings of this evaluation. These commitments are intended to provide an improved experience for taxpayers and support the government’s vision for a trusted, modern tax administration system.

A number of work streams are also being taken forward including a review of the reasonable excuse provisions. The work of the forum will continue which may include revisiting pre-2012 powers.

Under commitment 19, HMRC will be consulting with agents and their representatives to consider guidance updates on coding out of debt (through the PAYE system) and Simple Assessment by summer 2021.

The Institute is represented in many of the ongoing work streams of this forum, including a review of reasonable excuse.