HMRC boasts about its digital performance - but there’s still plenty to do
- Summary:
- The UK’s tax collector, HMRC, has outlined some impressive numbers following what it calls a “channel shift” taking place. But is it too early for it to pound its chest?
Potter was particularly keen to highlight HMRC’s Multi-Channel Digital Tax Platform (MDTP) and its Contact Platform, which he describes as “the largest virtual contact centre on the planet”.
The post comes not too long after the department was criticised by an influential committee for its poor customer service, where it was claimed that it was so bad that it could be impacting the UK’s tax revenues.
In some instances HMRC was only answering 50% of the calls coming in to its service centre.
Not only this, but HMRC is in the spotlight to transform the services it offers into useful online products after the Chancellor of the Exchequer allocated it £1.3 billion to become “one of the most digitally advanced tax administrations in the world” by 2020.
I’ve noted previously that whilst this is a much needed investment (it’s incredibly difficult to do some of the most basic tasks when dealing with HMRC), I’ve also noted that Whitehall doesn’t have the best track record managing projects of this size and against such stringent timelines.
I have also been informed by contacts that whilst HMRC has done a good job in recruiting some top digital talent, it has also gone rogue in some instances and not taken into account what is most useful for the taxpayer. Equally, I’ve been told in recent months that some of the more senior digital recruits haven’t performed as well as had been hoped.
So whilst Potter’s post is welcome, and the stats do look impressive, I think we need to be cautious in perceiving this as a success story just yet.
The numbers
Potter began his post by saying:
We received an unprecedented number of Self Assessment returns online this year - 89% or 9.24m customers. This is fantastic and I wanted to share with you some other numbers I’m excited by. They really do highlight how the right technology is helping us achieve the channel shift we can see taking place.
Compared to 2015, HMRC received:
- 480k more returns online
- 300k less paper returns - down 21%
- 41k fewer calls - down 7% - and, in addition, a further 88k customers got the help they needed through webchat instead of having to phone
Potter also said that HMRC had halved phone waiting times, down to just over five minutes, which will be welcome news to anyone that has attempted to call in to the department.
He added that the MDTP, which is at the “heart” of HMRC’s digital future, has enabled the department to:
- launch 28 new digital services
- bring 3.5m business customers into the Business Tax Account
- enable more than 900k individuals to access their Personal Tax Account since it launched at the end of November 2015
- save more than £8m in operating costs
- replace 85 forms with submittable forms that can be tracked
Whilst the Contact Platform, which launched at the end of 2014, has now been rolled out to 22,000 staff and over the self-assessment period has enabled:
- 600 extra HMRC staff trained to use webchat, extended office hours to 22:00 and a working from home trial providing a service to midnight for the last two weeks of the SA peak 2016
over 114,000 webchats between customers and HMRC advisers - an 11% reduction in call demand in Jan 2016 compared with the same period last year
Potter also said that 1 million customers use HMRC’s virtual assistant to get answers to routine questions, 250,000 people use the department’s comments and questions channel and tens of thousands of people interact with HMRC on Twitter and Facebook.
Still work to do
Potter finished his post by noting that on his own Twitter feed he found plenty of comments that his digital team could be proud of. And rightly so. And browsing Twitter myself there are comments of support for the department’s improved service.
However, it’s also hard to ignore that there are still plenty of negative ones:
I've been fined for HMRC for not filling in a self assessment for a year I wasn't trading. They can send me a bill but not a reminder?
— Adam Griffiths (@adam_griffiths) March 10, 2016
So I've contacted HMRC repeatedly for the last year asking about my tax for self assessment and no one got back to me. £100 fine
— Sami (@Commodore_21) March 10, 2016
Just spent 10 mins on the phone to HMRC who sent me a penalty notice for not completing a self- assessment form, which I don't need to do!
— Ann Cummings (@ann_cummings) February 29, 2016
From my own personal experience of dealing with the department, I can also safely say that HMRC is a
long way off from being a user-friendly, digital tax department. So whilst progress has been made, there is still a lot to do.Equally, we are about a year away from Aspire, the department’s multi-billion pound, multi-year outsourcing contract coming to an end. At which point HMRC is meant to have moved away from a few select suppliers towards a more diverse, agile sourcing model, with more digital capability in-house.
However, as we’ve been made aware, too many of these outsourcing deals are getting extended, instead of broken up as intended, and Whitehall is under fire for not building up its commercial capability to manage more complex sourcing models.
So whilst these numbers are impressive, there is an awful lot for HMRC to do in a rather short amount of time.
My take
Anyone that interacts with HMRC knows how desperately this needs doing. And I have no doubt that the team involved are doing what they can to make it happen. That being said, they’ve inherited a mess. And new technology won’t fix things. These systems and services need to be redesigned and need to be made simpler for this to work.
Whilst 2020 may seem a long way off, when you consider the task at hand, Potter and his team are probably faced with one of the biggest challenges in Whitehall.