Reform UK have today announced that people forced to wait over 30
minutes on the phone to HMRC will receive a £30 tax credit at the
end of the tax year.
To make sure officials hit their targets, Reform will tie the pay
of senior HMRC officials to their customer service performance.
If senior officials fail to make progress on waiting times, they
will be fired.
The move comes after MPs accused HMRC of deliberately degrading
its own services to force people to use its website.
The average small business owner spends 44 hours and £4,500 a
year on complying with tax laws. That is up 10% from 2021(1).
Taxpayers waited an average of 23 minutes in 2023/24 up from 5
minutes in 2018/19. Almost 50,000 calls were ended by HMRC
without the taxpayer being helped because they exceeded their
maximum waiting time of 70 minutes(2). This means that, during
2023/24, HMRC wasted 14 million hours of taxpayers' time on the
phone or £275 million in wasted productivity(3).
In 2018/19, the average wait time was 5 minutes and hardly anyone
waited more than 30 minutes. Therefore, we are confident that we
can bring wait times down. Still, we have allowed for the tax
credit to cost £70 million a year. This is based on 5% of callers
waiting more than half an hour (down from approximately 20% in
2023/24) and 50% fewer callers abandoning their calls. If we
reduce wait times further, the policy will cost less.
HMRC will be required to make adjustments to lower wait times
within existing departmental spending limits. For example, it
could allow small businesses to negotiate debt repayment plans in
writing, rather than insisting that negotiations occur over the
phone, if they so choose(4). Similarly, it could keep cases
assigned to the same case manager for longer, to avoid time
wasted as each new manager familiarises themselves with the
details.
To prevent abuse, the tax credit would be limited to two
occasions in a given tax year and only given as a non-refundable
tax credit, so only taxpayers would receive it.
Reform's shadow Chancellor, , said:
The British people have lost countless hours of their lives stuck
on the phone to HMRC.
"Under Reform that ends. If HMRC delay you, they can repay you.
We will restore basic fairness to the taxpayer.
ENDS
Notes to editors
- Federation of Small Business, Taking a Toll.
- National Audit Office, HMRC Customer Service.
- At £19.67 median hourly earnings for FT workers. ONS,
Employee earnings in the UK:
2025.
- See HMRC, DMBM802050 - Time To Pay: Time
To Pay requests: written requests for Time To Pay.
Click here to read Reform's
Contract With Small Business
