Telephone line, give me some time

KEY POINTS

• £900m spent on taxpayer service.
• 74% of calls answered in 2011/12.
• Use of 0845 numbers.
• Reducing the need for calling HMRC.

Will the day ever come when we can report that HMRC’s customer service performance is excellent that 99% of telephone calls are answered after only eight rings and that the responses are correct? We can only hope so because although things are improving this is not the case yet.

The National Audit Office’s (NAO) latest report on HMRC customer service performance concludes that it has improved since its low point in 2010 but it is still poor value for taxpayers.

This is despite the department spending an estimated £900m annually approximately 25% of its £3.7bn expenditure on serving taxpayers eg answering telephone calls...