ICAS Tax team represents members at HMRC stakeholder conference
By Chris Campbell, Head of Tax (Tax Practice and Owner Managed Business Taxes)
5 March 2024
We review the recent HMRC stakeholder conference, which members of our Tax team attended to represent your views.
Every year, HMRC holds a conference where over 200 stakeholders (including professional bodies and software developers) are invited to London to collaborate and share feedback on the operation of the UK tax system and the challenges HMRC faces in the future. The ICAS Tax team attended this year’s conference on Thursday 29 February, using the opportunity to share feedback on the issues that our members tell us are important to them when supporting their clients.
The conference started with an opening address from Jim Harra, HMRC First Permanent Secretary and CEO, and Angela MacDonald, Deputy CEO and Second Permanent Secretary. This was followed by a number of speeches from other HMRC representatives.
MTD ITSA and helpline waiting times
During the speeches, HMRC’s preparations for the mandation of Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment (MTD ITSA) from April 2026 were mentioned. The private beta testing phase will take place from April 2024, with Intuit QuickBooks and Sage announced as the first large software developers to commit publicly to this phase. We expect other software developers to follow suit in the coming weeks.
We regularly receive feedback from our members about the call waiting times on HMRC helplines, so it was no surprise that this was mentioned during the conference. HMRC revealed that three million calls last year were either to request an individual’s national insurance number, PAYE coding notice or to reset a password. HMRC maintains that if solutions to those problems had been sought online, 500 advisers would have been freed up to deal with more complex queries that required to be dealt with via telephone or post.
HMRC drew attention to the 80% taxpayer satisfaction of those who use its digital services. Recent changes to the child benefit claims process have also seen the new digital system turn around child benefit claims within three days, rather than the previous wait time of as much as 16 weeks.
Giving feedback on behalf of our members
The speeches were followed by workshops focused on moving taxpayers online, tax simplification, how better intermediation may help reduce the tax gap and building voluntary standards in the customs intermediary sector. The workshops offered the opportunity to relay feedback from ICAS about practical issues that our members experience when they liaise with HMRC on behalf of their clients.
HMRC makes clear its desire to encourage use of its digital services, so that capacity on its telephone lines can be freed up. We support the use of digital, but it’s important that HMRC’s digital services are improved so that they are useful and easy to use, making taxpayers and their agents want to use them instead of traditional methods. As an example of areas requiring improvement, we raised the ability to change a taxpayer’s PAYE coding notice. Currently, the HMRC online app allows a taxpayer to contact HMRC about the changes needed to their own tax code, but the app is not as interactive as it could be. Changes can also take weeks (or even months) before they are actioned.
We feel it’s important that the use of digital methods shouldn’t be mandatory for everyone and that alternative, non-digital channels should be made available. By improving its digital offering, HMRC can create capacity in the system for queries from those that don’t have access to digital services. In the meantime, we feel it's important that HMRC has sufficient resources to maintain an acceptable level of service to taxpayers and their agents.
Achieving tax simplification
We strongly support measures that help bring about tax simplification. Along with other professional bodies, we have called for action on tax simplification and written to the Financial Secretary to the treasury about this subject. Tax simplification was discussed in one of the workshops, so we were able to draw attention to recent legislative changes which haven’t helped to bring this about. This included the reduction in the capital gains tax annual exempt amount and dividend allowance, which is likely to increase the number of taxpayers in self-assessment.
Other points raised include the need for government to consult wider to make better decisions on tax legislation and ensure that simplification can be at the centre of tax policy outcomes. This is particularly important following the abolition of the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS).
In the workshops, the need for HMRC to ensure that the compliance burden is not so significant that it overrides the original policy intention was stressed. Plastic packaging tax was given as an example of that - whilst those businesses who invest in reducing the level of plastic in their packaging may reduce the tax they pay, the burden of the necessary returns was not reduced.
Achieving an improved agent experience
Across the workshops, we stressed the importance of improving the agent experience. Our members tell us they are frustrated that they can't view the same information as their clients via HMRC’s existing digital services. This often means that they need to call HMRC’s telephone helplines, when they could potentially self-serve and achieve a quicker outcome online.
Making amendments to PAYE coding notices for clients online is an area where we feel HMRC could make improvements to the agent experience. Our members tell us that they are generally comfortable dealing with HMRC online, but that the online services are not currently good enough to deal with the regular ongoing tasks that their clients need support with. Further progress clearly needs to be made by HMRC in achieving this, and this matter is something that the ICAS Tax team will continue to provide feedback on via our usual forums in the coming months.
Let us know your views
We are interested to hear your views on HMRC’s digital services and how these could be expanded to improve your experience and better serve your clients.
We also welcome your views more generally, which help inform our work on consultations or other tax-related matters. ICAS responds to many tax calls for evidence and consultations, as well as producing tax policy papers and reports. We also regularly attend meetings with HMRC at which service levels, delays and other issues are discussed, and we raise problems being encountered by members.
Please email tax@icas.com to share your insights and feedback.
