We’ve heard of playing hard to get, but HMRC win all the medals for keeping taxpayers at arm’s length. If you want to ask them any questions during the day, your average waiting time will be 38 minutes before reaching an actual human. After 6 o’clock, this increases to 61 minutes!
Don’t leave your tax return until the last minute
For goodness sake don’t leave your tax return to the last minute and get comfortable before you embark on any telephone enquiries to HMRC. It’s important to know that if you need last minute help with your tax return, HMRC might not be able to give you it when you want it.
What did Which? say?
The figures come from a survey carried out by Which?, the consumer champion, during September and October 2015. Of the 100 calls they placed to HMRC helplines, not one was answered within 15 minutes. They also discovered that the later in the day they called, the longer the wait time – one was only answered after 1 hour and 16 minutes. They worked out that the average daytime waiting time was 38 minutes – more than doubling last year’s average of 18 minutes. The same survey was carried out at the same time last year.
Whilst the waiting times have soared, the number of taxpayers that were cut off without ever having their call answered has reduced from 29 to 7 out of one hundred.
Which? also carried out a survey of its members to find out what they considered a reasonable waiting time would be. Of those who had been in touch with HMRC in the last year, only 1 in 10 were happy to be kept on hold for any longer than 10 minutes. This means that 90% of those Which? members found HMRC’s 38 minute wait to be unacceptable.
HMRC has replied, saying, “Our service levels were not good enough at busier periods earlier this year, and we have apologised for the inconvenience caused to our customers.” They have stated that these survey results do not accurately reflect the current service level as this has “…significantly improved in recent months”.
There are 3,000 more people staffing HMRC customer service phone lines and there will be even more as the rush towards the January 31st Self-assessment deadline begins.
The National Audit office, in a separate report, stated that HMRC were hitting their immediate tax revenue targets and tackling the estimated £16billion cost of tax fraud was “not straightforward”.
