HMRC have published HMRC performance update: October to December 2022 and supporting detail.
The summary states:
- “HMRC is your tax service – we want to support you to get your tax right and make it hard for the dishonest minority to cheat the system
- the vast majority of our customers pay their tax in full and on time, without having to phone or write to us. So far in 2022 to 2023, customer satisfaction with our phone, webchat and digital services has been at 80%
- more customers than ever are using our online services to manage their tax affairs, including our digital Time to Pay service for payment plans, which went live in November, and the HMRC App which had nearly 40 million logins between April and December 2022
- in the year to date, we haven’t met our customer service standards for dealing with phone calls and correspondence, although we have largely maintained or improved service levels compared with 2021 to 2022. We want to help more of our customers manage their tax affairs quickly and easily online – which is why we’re improving and expanding our digital services – so we can focus on supporting customers who are unable to use digital services or who need extra support
- we’ve also been supporting customers to make import declarations on the new Customs Declaration Service, which traders have been required to use since 1 October – a key part of the government’s plans to establish a world-leading, fully digitised border
- so far, this financial year, we’ve protected around £18.6 billion in tax yield through our compliance work – this is revenue that would otherwise have been lost to the Exchequer through error, fraud or non-compliance
- despite a strong operational performance in recovering tax debt since the pandemic, economic conditions mean we’re seeing more customers getting into tax debt
- we’re doing everything we can to help those who engage with us to get out of debt. Where customers don’t engage, we’re taking prompt enforcement action to collect the tax due”