HMRC departmental plan quarterly update

HMRC has updated its departmental plan for 2015 to 2020, to take account of the latest performance figures for April to June 2016. The National Audit Office has noted in its latest departmental overview (see http://bit.ly/2fp7BHj), that HMRC may have to update its plan in response to Brexit, particularly as regards the objective of tackling avoidance and evasion, in the event of new border controls or changes to the VAT system.

HMRC’s targets for 2016/17 are:

·         raise £27bn in additional revenue through compliance and enforcement activity (£5bn raised between April and June 2016);

·         increase the number of criminal investigations into serious and complex tax crime, leading to 100 prosecutions a year (by 2020);

·         ensure tax credits error and fraud does not exceed 5%;

·         handle new tax credit and child benefit claims within 22 days;

·         increase to 7m the number of taxpayers using their personal tax accounts (2.7m at June 2016);

·         achieve 80% customer satisfaction for digital services;

·         reply to 95% of i-forms and secure emails within 7 days;

·         answer customer telephone calls within an average of 6 minutes;

·         handle 85% of call attempts;

·         respond to 80% of post within 15 working days;

·         reduce business customers’ costs by £400m;

·         achieve £1.9bn cumulative savings over lifetime of Parliament mainly through digitisation of tax collection and the employment of a smaller but more highly skilled workforce; and

·         achieve £203m of savings in 2016/17.

The National Audit Office has again qualified HMRC’s accounts for the level of fraud and error resulting in tax credits overpayments, whilst acknowledging some ‘encouraging’ improvements.

The NAO report also comments on the key points from the independent Adjudicator’s Office annual report on complaints about HMRC. The adjudicator received 1,226 new complaints about HMRC in 2015/16 (up from 1,044 in 2014/15). The adjudicator resolved 914, upholding approximately 73% either partially or substantially and mediated 11% of cases directly between customers and HMRC. The number of personal tax complaints partially or substantially upheld decreased to 63%. For tax credits, the proportion of complaints upheld decreased to 80.8%.

See http://bit.ly/1osy4Fc.