Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the committee, said HMRC seemed to be “degrading its own services as a matter of policy”.
“HMRC is an organisation in defensive mode and needs bold and ambitious leadership to begin to chart its recovery,” he added.
Dead calls and long waits
The PAC report found that 44,000 customers were cut off on phone calls to the tax collector after being on hold for more than an hour last year.
Customers were not warned they were about to be cut off, nor were they called back.
The report stated that HMRC had “failed to prioritise” the needs of customers who used the phone to contact the organisation.
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“HMRC has been too willing to let its telephone services fail in the hope this forces people to use its digital services instead,” the report stated.
However, Jim Harra, chief executive of HMRC, described these claims as “completely baseless”, adding that call waiting times were down by 17 minutes since last year.
Digital-first leads to frustration
While HMRC would like more customers to contact it online, one recent report from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and the Chartered Institute of Taxation found that using webchat is less successful than making a phone call.
While HMRC answered the phone 88% of the time, webchats were unsuccessful more than half of the time.
Caroline Miskin, ICAEW’s senior technical manager for digital taxation, said the report “does not pull any punches in its assessment that the current state of play is eroding trust in the tax system.”
“HMRC’s telephone service is in a very poor state, causing frustration for taxpayers and agents.
“This is a worrying finding that may have significant consequences for tax collection. The Government must do all it can to invest in and support HMRC in putting this right,” she added.
Alternatives to telephone
There are several other ways to contact HMRC. Website MoneySavingExpert gives alternatives such as writing to HMRC by post, which is slower but you do not have to queue. Postal addresses can be found on the Gov.uk website.
For general queries, you can use X (formerly Twitter) or HMRC’s customer queries, although it may take several days to get a response.
