- HMRC performance stats show 140% jump in taxpayers using webchat
- Despite shutting phone lines for months the number of taxpayers ringing HMRC remains the same as the previous year
- Resourcing questions remain, with 28% of calls going unanswered in December
AJ Bell pensions and savings expert, Charlene Young, comments:
“HMRC’s plea for customers to contact them online instead of by phone or post has worked to some extent, with an explosion in the number of webchat queries dealt with.
“Over 854,000 webchat requests were made between April and December 2023, up 140% from 361,000 the same period the year before. Notably, customer satisfaction was strong at 79.8%, just shy of the 80% target.
“However, despite closing phone lines for an extended summer break, there’s been no let-up in total calls. Numbers are slightly higher than the same period a year before, with almost 27 million calls to the taxman racked up in the current tax year already.
“With the end of the tax year looming on the horizon and the self-assessment deadline having only just passed, that figure will surely spiral by April 5. The figures suggest the attempt to limit telephone queries has allowed the tax office to stand still in terms of the number of calls it has to handle – all things being equal the phone lines would surely have been jammed worse than ever were it not to have beefed up its online offering.
“On top of the summer closure, in December HMRC announced it would direct calls to its digital sausage machine. It opted to focus on ‘priority’ self-assessments calls, with their agent hotline being screened to check if calls really met the ‘priority’ cut, and other queries directed to its online channels.
“For taxpayers that would rather speak to a human being, however, this will have caused frustration. HMRC’s resource strains are echoed in telephone answer rates - despite aiming to get to 85% of calls, just 72% were answered in December. That suggests 392,000 calls lingering on hold, with taxpayers up against the self-assessment deadline having to hang up and try again.
“The tax return deadline has just passed and tax year end is approaching, which always leads to an uptick in queries. There’s also likely to be a rise in the number of new taxpayers forced to contact HMRC for the first time. They’ll be contacting the department with queries about things like CGT, dividend taxation and tax on cash savings, with slashed or frozen thresholds meaning more people have tax to pay.
“The OBR forecasts that there will be 1.2 million more taxpayers in the current tax year, when compared to last year, and another 700,000 next tax year. What’s more, HMRC hasn’t been given any additional budget to deal with this increase in taxpayers, and is expected to ‘absorb’ the cost of servicing them.”
Tax net widens
Figures previously released by HMRC under a Freedom of Information request made by AJ Bell show 635,000 more people will pay tax on dividends in 2023/24, with the tax-free allowance cut from £2,000 to £1,000, and 1,115,000 additional individuals will be brought into paying dividend tax from April 2024, when the allowance is cut to £500.
Significantly more taxpayers will also be forced to pay tax on savings interest, with nearly a million more taxpayers hit with tax on savings interest this year alone, according to data obtained by AJ Bell:
