Further tales of woe of contacting HMRC
The consumer body ‘Which’ has recently carried out research into the problems in getting through to HMRC telephone helplines and found that callers, on average, were left waiting for 38 minutes before they got through to an adviser. The same research last year, which involved making 100 calls to HMRC’s Self Assessment and general enquiries helplines, gave rise to an average wait of 18 minutes. Over the space of a year therefore waiting time has more than doubled.
Nearly one in five of calls made during the research were not answered within an hour. The longest wait recorded was one hour and 16 minutes!
According to the research the longest delays were experienced later in the day. The average wait time for calls made before 2pm was 28 minutes but after 6pm it increased to 61 minutes.
HMRC should hang their head in shame for providing such a woeful, inadequate, inept and unacceptable service. Such shortcomings in the private sector would not be tolerated and heads would roll.
HMRC receives around 60 million calls a year, with the busiest times falling around the key deadlines such as 31st January for Self Assessment and 31st July for tax credits renewals. In a bid to cope with this high volume and improve its continual deteriorating customer service, HMRC have recruited an additional 3,000 extra staff available outside of normal office hours which the department says is helping to improve matters.
Which’s findings come as no surprise to me nor any other poor soul who has had the misfortune to attempt to call one of the Revenue’s helplines. They were recently severely criticised by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee and rightly so, especially when taxpayers are trying to get their taxes right but are being hampered by the very people who should be helping them and in an efficient manner. Well, we can all dream can’t we?
Absolutely my accountant ( my brother who helps me out ) has spent hours trying to get through and almost given up. I spent at least 30 mins waiting to speak to someone after recieving an appalling letter virtually accusing me of being fraudulent when in fact it is them who owe me money. The new system for a very small business does not work very well as it is difficult to make monthly changes which causes problems with what you have to pay. What a state of affairs when we have enough to do with other admin changes. I have a very small local nursery and been operating for over40 years.
I can tell you that even if you do get through you are likely to end up speaking to somebody who knows far less about tax than you do and is completely unable to help and couldn’t give a monkeys.
It’s been the case for years now that people are regularly sent bills that no body, including amazingly HMRC, can understand or explain. This is particularly the case around the tax credits system but applies across the board to some extent.
HMRC are essentially broken and will continue until they collapse in a heap and complete reform is forced on them.