I was chatting to an accountant friend recently and he was telling me the client challenges they have when it comes to dealing with HMRC.
Here’s the scenario …
- Client gets a penalty notice from HMRC but they weren’t in the wrong (HMRC mistake).
- They ask the accountants to raise it on their behalf.
- The accountants sit waiting in phone queues for up to an hour (at which time you tend to get cut off by HMRC).
- Repeated attempts to get through may eventually get the issue resolved for the client BUT the client has to pay their accountant for the time it took to deal with it – mainly via wasted time on the phone waiting.
- The accountants now find themselves recommending that the clients themselves just pay the penalty, regardless of there being a mistake, as it’d be cheaper than paying the accountants time to try and resolve it.
OK, the client company could sit on the phone to HMRC themselves and not incur any costs, but they’re still incurring costs on their time that could be used for something more productive.
And therein lies the core problem: HMRC systems are not fit for purpose.
There are elements of government that operate brilliantly online. An example would be the super-simple process of paying for car tax.
Anything related to taxes is not.
The online systems are appalling and the ability to get support is disgusting.
I’ve been on the receiving end of this myself, wasted hours trying to get something resolved with HMRC, and their horrible phone hold music is entrenched in my head and incites a feeling of depression as soon as I hear it.
Surely there can’t be that many people with taxation issues, that they simply cannot cope? If that WAS the case, then they need either more people or easier ways to deal with some things online.
Let’s take an incorrect penalty notice for example: the recipient should be able to go online, enter the unique reference for that penalty notice, lodge why they think it’s incorrect, and then it’s the responsibility of HMRC to process that efficiently before responding to them.
When it comes to needing to ring HMRC, that is itself archaic. Instead, go to a website (or log into your government gateway account), select from scenarios that allow for most types of request and then choose a date/time on a calendar to have either a phone or Zoom type call (may be needed if needing to show things on screen). That’s all booked into a calendar and recorded in your account that interaction has been started.
OK, it could still be the case that calls have to be booked out weeks ahead, but most people would see that as reasonable and also would make them interact faster with HMRC in the future. Those that have a tax question a day before payments are due should expect to go into a longer queue and not get it resolved quickly.
If there’s one thing worse than paying taxes (most of which we know will be squandered wastefully by governments), then it’s being unable to deal with issues that cause us great stress until they’re resolved.
I don’t actually know why HMRC has not modernised their systems, as it seems such a logical thing to do, and from a security perspective they can implement various checks to ensure they are dealing with genuine people.
