House of Commons - Public Accounts

Select Committee on Public Accounts Twentieth Report

1 Providing information to taxpayers by telephone and online

1. Each year millions of people submit a tax return or other tax form to HM Revenue & Customs. For example, around 9 million people complete an Income Tax Self Assessment return each year. Helping people to provide accurate information about their personal tax affairs is essential if their tax payments or refunds are to be correctly assessed. If they are not correctly assessed, they may later face unexpected demands for tax, with interest, or they may not receive refunds of tax when they are due. Accurate and timely information also helps to reduce the Department's costs in seeking further information and chasing up or correcting forms and returns.[2]

2. There are around 40 different personal tax forms which taxpayers may need to complete at one time or another. The Department produces guidance for each form and around 60 leaflets and factsheets. It provides information through 13 telephone helplines, 279 enquiry centres and on its website. The Department spends around £35 million a year on producing and distributing printed material, and some £55 million dealing with around 12.5 million enquiries about completing forms by telephone, face to face or via its website.[3]

3. Most contacts are by telephone. Around five million taxpayers a year telephone the Department with specific queries about their tax affairs or asking for general information. In 2006-07, the Department handled 22.5 million telephone calls.[4]

4. The Department currently measures its performance against a target of answering at least 90% of telephone callers within a day. Its performance improved in 2006-07 when it answered 94% of calls compared with 81% in 2005-06. This target differs, however, from industry-wide benchmarks, which are average time to answer and percentage of calls answered within 20 seconds. In 2006-07, the Department answered 72% of calls within 20 seconds, compared with a general industry benchmark of 80% (Figure 1). In 2005-06, people telephoning the Department encountered engaged tones and busy messages on 60 million occasions so that, on average, callers needed to phone 4.3 times before speaking to an adviser. In 2006-07, the number of engaged tones or busy messages reduced to 11 million, so that, on average, callers needed to phone 1.5 times before getting through.[5]

Figure 1: HM Revenue and Customs' performance in dealing with telephone calls compared with industry benchmarks

Performance measure	HMRC performance 2005-06	HMRC performance 2006-07	Industry-wide benchmark
Percentage of calls answered within 20 seconds	45	72	80
Average time to answer in seconds	69¹	34¹	28
Note: Excludes 11 seconds introductory message to achieve like for like comparison with industry benchmarks.

Sources: Q 5; C&AG's Report, para 2.8; Ev 13; Merchants Global Contact Centre Benchmarking Report 2005 and International Customer Management Institute Multichannel Contact Centre Study II 2005.

5. The Department acknowledges that it should use a range of indicators to assess its performance and it is considering alternative measures such as average time to answer. It intends to improve its performance to match that of other organisations.[6]

6. The average cost for the Department of each contact is around £4.40. Face to face meetings are the most expensive, at roughly twice the cost of telephone contacts. Obtaining information from its website is the least expensive method, but is currently the least used. The Department is encouraging people to use the most cost-effective method of contact that meets their needs. It recognises that people have different patterns of behaviour and the method that is most cost-effective for some will not necessarily be for others.[7]

7. The Department is working with other departments and agencies to implement the recommendations of the Government's report on Service Transformation of December 2006. The report concluded that telephone contact centre operating costs could be reduced by 25% across government by:[8]

resolving 80% of enquiries on first contact so that customers do not need to call back for further information;
reducing avoidable contact—those occasions where there is no real need for the customer to contact the departments—by 50%; and
reducing the number of information requests handled by telephone by 50%, with the internet becoming the primary access point for all simple information and advice requests.

8. The Department's target is to increase to at least 80% by 2008 the proportion of people whose needs are successfully met at the first point of contact, whether by telephone or other means. In 2006-07, 74% reported that they received the help or information they were seeking the first time they contacted the Department about a particular issue.[9]

9. The Department aims to reduce the number of avoidable calls when people ring the Department to obtain further information. It recognises the need to give people the right information the first time whether by telephone, on its website or by other guidance. For example, specimen calculations can help taxpayers to understand what they owe. The Department also recognises that some of its automatically generated communications are out of date.[10]

10. The Department plans to improve its website so that more people can find information online, rather than having to contact the Department directly. It estimates it could save over £100 million by encouraging more people to use its website and online services. It acknowledges that its website is not as good as those of some tax administrations in other countries.[11]

11. Most forms and guidance are available or can be ordered via the Department's website. The website contains 170,000 pages of information and people sometimes experience difficulty in finding the information they need. The Department has work underway to make it easier to find information, for example, by including 'back-to-top' links to help people navigate the website, and last-modified dates on webpages so that users know whether the information is up to date. It also plans to introduce a better and quicker search facility. The websites of some overseas tax authorities offer additional features. For example, the Canada Revenue Agency website offers a 'click to talk' feature whereby website users can directly access telephone helplines if they require additional assistance.[12]

12. The Department regards improving the website as a high priority which would require substantial investment. It is planning improvements in the context of plans announced by the Government in October 2007 for transferring the citizen and business content of most government websites to Direct.gov and Businesslink.gov by 2011. Individuals and businesses will be able to use these two websites to access a range of government services.[13]

13. The Department also operates other online services, such as filing an Income tax Self assessment. Other forms which individual taxpayers use, such as forms for inheritance tax, providing information for PAYE or determining residency status, cannot yet be filed online.[14]

14. The Department is investing £170 million in upgrading its online services following Lord Carter's Review of Online Services in 2006. That set the Department a goal of universal electronic delivery of individuals' tax returns from IT literate groups by 2012. On Self Assessment, the Department has reached its 2008 target that 35% of self assessed income tax returns are filed online. Despite disruption to the online filing service on the 31 January 2008 deadline, the Department received nearly 3.8 million online returns by the extended 1 February deadline.[15]

15. Some groups can also contact the Department by email. These include Income Tax Self Assessment taxpayers who are registered for online services and people whose queries would have been handled by the former HM Customs & Excise. The Department is reviewing how it might include other people in its email services. It is considering the experiences of other organisations in handling large volumes of email contact and the security issues involved.[16]

2 C&AG's Report, para 1-2 Back

3 C&AG's Report, paras 1-2, 4 Back

4 C&AG's Report, para 2.6; Ev 13 Back

5 Qq 3-7, 88-89; C&AG's Report, paras 2.8-2.9; Ev 13 Back

6 Qq 6-7, 89 Back

7 C&AG's Report, paras 1.4-1.5 Back

8 Q 81; C&AG's Report, para 1.6; Service Transformation: A better service for citizens and businesses, a better deal for the taxpayer, Sir David Varney, HM Treasury, December 2006 Back

9 Q 84; C&AG's Report, para 2.2 Back

10 Qq 59-61, 81, 84; C&AG's Report, paras 3.9, 3.16 Back

11 Qq 43, 81, 114 Back

12 Qq 9-10, 38; C&AG's Report, para 2.20; Appendix 3 Back

13 Qq 8, 38, 41; Service Transformation Agreement, HM Treasury, October 2007 Back