HM Revenue & Customs recently found themselves being brutally scathed by the BBC’s Watchdog programme.
People have complained about the excuses offered to them by HMRC in terms of “backlogs” and “computer glitches”, one person was even told that his files had been “lost”.
HM Revenue & Customs have strict policies when it comes to the late filing of accounts and tax returns. Yet it is claimed that they do not take dealing with customer service as seriously. HMRC errors in 2007 or accidentally losing the data of over 25 million child benefit claimants and more recently sending 50,000 tax returns to the wrong people has also been bought up.
What people (and Watchdog) seem to forget is the sheer volume of people and businesses that HMRC deals with. A point reiterated by Lesley Strathie, their CEO:
“HMRC wants to deliver a first class tax service. We are acutely aware that we sometimes fall short of our ambition. The numbers of people we deal with every year, sometimes on extremely complex issues, are simply enormous. We handle around 1.2 million telephone calls a week and receive some 74 million letters a year. It only takes a small number of our transactions to go wrong for a lot of people to be affected. That’s why I am determined to make the services we provide as good as they can possibly be. I accept that we still have a long way to go and I apologise to those who have had problems.
The vast majority of people who do business with HMRC do not experience problems. They are taxed correctly and have their correspondence dealt with in a reasonable time. I know, however, that this is of little consolation to all those who have not received the effective and efficient service we aim to provide.
We will continue to focus our resources onto those areas where we must improve. I am grateful to those customers who have taken the time and trouble to tell us about their experiences. I will ensure that HMRC learns from this feedback to deliver the best possible service to all our customers within the resources available to us.”
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