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In a survey 81% of businesses rated their overall experience of dealing with HMRC as ‘good’. Most businesses that participated in the qualitative follow-up interviews were positive about their relationship with HMRC at an overall level and felt that they could approach HMRC with any issues.
Judging by the feedback on HMRC performance which we receive from readers, they may well be surprised at such a positive response. The explanation is that this is the conclusion of the annual survey of large businesses – broadly those with turnover of over £200m (tinyurl.com/hmrclbs2023). While our readership includes many who advise such businesses, most readers spend their time advising business whose turnover has far fewer noughts on the end.
Large businesses have the benefit of their own customer relationship manager. Although, as the survey reveals, there is variety in how effective they are, there is no doubt that it is a considerable advantage to businesses to have a personal point of contact with HMRC with whom issues can be discussed in real time and problems resolved speedily.
Many readers would love to have the same access on behalf of their clients, but HMRC is never going to be resourced to enable that to happen, however desirable it might be. The old days of the local tax district where, at least in our possibly rose-tinted memories, the DI knew all of the local businesses and their agents will never return. But would it really be too hard for HMRC to set up a system so that each firm had a designated contact person in HMRC? They couldn’t be expected to deal with every query, but would act as a conduit to whoever it was within HMRC who could provide a response. It doesn’t seem like rocket science to me.
If you do one thing…
See the revised IHT100 forms recently published by HMRC (tinyurl.com/hmrcihtm10650).
