The government plans to move rapidly to a digital only approach to communications with HMRC to reduce admin costs and cut use of call centres
To achieve this the government intends to reform the rules about how taxpayers give consent to communicate digitally with HMRC by making it the default position.
The changes are in line with HMRC’s longer term strategy to increase the use of self-serve and digital channels and to provide services that are ‘easy to use, with increased support to remove barriers to digital services where appropriate’.
It also admits that HMRC guidance needs to be improved to make it more accessible and understandable for taxpayers.
In future, HMRC will provide less choice around the non-digital channels it offers to taxpayers such as telephone calls and post to reduce the use of these channels, where users are able to go digital.
HMRC’s aim is to improve the range and accessibility of its digital services and move as much taxpayer interaction to self-serve digital channels as possible. At the same time, HMRC will look to increase automation and the ability to self-serve in its non-digital channels wherever possible, while providing support for those who need it.
Many taxpayers already do some of their tax online, using their personal tax account, business tax account and the HMRC app. ‘As these services have been developed separately over the last few years, they have not always offered a unified and consistent experience to taxpayers,’ HMRC said.
As part of the overhaul, HMRC aims to introduce a new single customer account for all taxpayers.
HMRC aims to implement its first phase of transforming digital services through the single customer account by 2025. This will focus on transforming services for individual taxpayers and account functionality, with business needs addressed in later phases.
Part of the plan will focus on improving sign in, security and subscription to digital services. HMRC will also start rolling out features to enable taxpayers to change their details (phone numbers, emails, address, marital status) online in a single place and have those changes apply to all services to which they are subscribed.
The proposals also aim to reduce the volume of post sent out by HMRC, which currently sends around 70 million items by post annually, at a cost to the taxpayer of around £40m.
Over the next two years, HMRC will start to reduce the higher volume letters and forms it sends out on paper and will instead provide these through digital channels. It will also do this for some key inbound forms.
It has already confirmed that it will require the minority of digitally capable employers who still submit P11D and P11D(b) forms (reporting employee benefits and expenses) on paper to use online forms from April 2023. It will then move to providing digitally capable employers with P6 and P9 coding notices solely using digital methods.
HMRC is seeking views on whether all, but digitally excluded taxpayers should be required to register for income tax for self assessment (ITSA) online, through their digital tax account.
Using the digital by default approach, HMRC would assume consent from the taxpayer to receive future ITSA communications digitally, unless they opted out. HMRC would then deliver the taxpayer’s first notice to file digitally and require the first and subsequent annual ITSA returns to be delivered digitally.
Before implementing these changes HMRC said it would ensure there was a high level of taxpayer satisfaction with the digital registration service. It also said there would be sufficient advance notification of the move with advance communications with agents, accountants and taxpayers.
There are also plans to reform the repayment process with a push to digital only approach.
Recent research found that participants were keen to see fewer steps in the repayments process and some found the sign up and authentication process to be a barrier and were keen to see a simplified approach.
There was also low awareness of the process for claiming repayments digitally and taxpayers said that P800 notifications could often be missed or not acted upon.
On PAYE overpayments, HMRC plans to contact taxpayers to offer a choice between receiving a digital payment or requesting a payable order instead of sending a payable order after 21 days if the taxpayer takes no action.
This will help to prevent payable orders being sent to incorrect addresses and will allow taxpayers to self-serve and get their repayments more quickly, which will also reduce HMRC’s printing and paper costs.
HMRC is also looking at ways to improve the accuracy of tax codes and wants to better understand how it can try to get tax codes more reflective of an individual’s circumstances more quickly when circumstances change through job moves and additional of employee benefits such as company cars.
