Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert has warned HMRC’s online services are ‘poor’ and don’t meet taxpayer needs, according to a top UK tax firm. Blick Rothenberg, a UK firm that provides tax, accounting and business services, said HMRC’s digital services are “not meeting taxpayer needs”.
The firm said HMRC “cannot support those with complex tax affairs”, in a statement published this week. Robert Salter, Director says: “HMRC’s poor quality digitalisation is causing woe for taxpayers. Early in 2024 the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said that HMRC’s customer services must be sufficiently resourced to meet service standards until its digital services adequately address the needs of taxpayers and their agents.”
Robert added: “We also recently heard of a lady whose tax assessment was wrong because her state pension was accounted for incorrectly in the ‘simplified assessment’ of her tax liability which HMRC actually produced automatically. If the figures for income received from the Government cannot be reflected correctly in HMRC’s assessments, it does not reflect at all well on the quality of HMRC’s digitalisation programme.”
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An HMRC spokesperson said: “More than 80% of customers are satisfied with our digital services, with more and more people using them to quickly and easily manage their tax affairs. At the same time, we’re making strong progress in improving our overall service standards, with call wait times down by more than 17 minutes since April.”
Mr Lewis’ team at MSE says there are other ways to contact HMRC, including to call HMRC directly for support on your tax affairs, write to HMRC by post and contact HMRC on X (formerly Twitter)for general queries. MSE says you can also use HMRC’s customer forums – but again, it’s only for general queries.
The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW)/ Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) joint report published in December 2024 shows that their digital services still do not address those needs. HMRC’s webchats only appear to connect 49% of the time and the resolution rates of queries submitted in this format is only 21% even when a connection is established.