It will come as little surprise to most to discover that HMRC are taking longer than ever to answer telephone calls, and more than ever are going totally unanswered.
Recent information released by HMRC shows that more than 4 million calls went totally unanswered in the last year, with more than 1 in 10 callers failing to get through to anyone – that’s twice as many as a year ago.
14 percent waited more than 10 minutes to be answered and that doesn’t include the time spent working your way through the automated service which adds up to four minutes on the call. These figures don’t include callers who only get the engaged tone so are actually even worse than HMRC would like to admit.
I spent four minutes on the phone today answering these automated questions, only to be connected to a message saying ‘Sorry, all our agents are busy and we cannot deal with your call now’ before they hung up. If they cannot answer the call then they should not connect, and not waste our time and money pointlessly.
HMRC have deliberately cut staff on the phones and moved focus onto the digital services, but these too are operating at a customer satisfaction level below the 80% that HMRC sets itself. Anyone who has tried to find even the most basic information or have complicated factors explained in layman’s terms are likely to be left disappointed as even the accountants struggle to find the answers they want on the site.
Our advice? Do not leave anything to the last minute as you will not necessarily get the information that you need in time. Register for the relevant taxes in plenty of time, make your filings and payments long before the deadline and do not rely on HMRC to provide you with the information that you need.
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