An influential cross-party group of MPs has concluded that the UK tax authority is "trying to downgrade" its telephone helplines and is "willing to let them fail" as it pushes taxpayers to move to online services.
HMRC "restricted access to its telephone services too quickly before ensuring alternative digital services are fully in place", the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said on Wednesday.
"All HMRC clients have a legal obligation to pay tax, so HMRC has a duty to work with them," said Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. "If I were a teacher marking HMRC work, I would give it 'could do better' or 'needs improvement'."
The tax authority began moving to digital services in 2010, with the aim of providing online support to customers and freeing up phone lines for vulnerable individuals and those with complex needs.
But demand for its helpline remains high. A report by the National Audit Office's spending watchdog published in May last year found that in total taxpayers spent the equivalent of nearly 800 years of HMRC detention time in 2022-23, more than double the figure for 2019-20.
Sir Jim Harra, chief executive of HMRC, said the commission's claims were "completely baseless". The tax authority has reduced phone waiting times from around 28 minutes in April 2024 to around 11 minutes.
He added: "We will always answer the phone for those who need extra help. At the same time, more than 80% of customers are satisfied with our digital services."
MPs said in the report that HMRC should "reinstate the call waiting time target as a key performance measure" and "ensure it provides customers with real-time and accurate estimates of call waiting times".
The report urges the tax authority to scrap its policy of cutting off calls after customers wait 70 minutes. According to the NAO, HMRC terminated more than 43,000 calls in this way in 2023-24, a six-fold increase on the previous year.
In March 2024, HMRC halted plans to slash helplines with two days' notice following strong opposition from professional bodies.
MPs also called on HMRC to take further action to reduce the money owed to the agency. The tax authority's debt balance ballooned to £43.9bn in March 2023, up from around £15bn in the five years before the pandemic.
The government announced £303m of extra funding in 2023-24 to help HMRC manage tax debt, but by March 2024 the balance had fallen by just 2%, or £900m.