HMRC have made cutbacks and are still doing so, they have removed the personal contact with local offices to develop call centres (don’t we just love those, press 1 for yes – oh no it’s spreading) but HMRC have excelled themselves when it comes to the task of answering the phones.

Most companies have a policy of answering the phone within a certain amount of rings, not HMRC if latest stats are anything to go by – only 43% of calls were answered and if that wasn’t bad enough, in the child tax credit renewal period only a third of calls were answered. Now it’s easy to blame the staff but don’t – there aren’t enough of them, they are under pressure to limit call times (to the extent that they have been known to hang up if the call is “taking” too long – but think where that pressure is coming from), they are not trained well enough – client rings up on three separate occasions and get’s three different answers – you can’t rely on the advice from HMRC staff but perish the thought that you do and get it wrong. Tax enquiry, employer compliance review, tax investigation – you name it and it can and will happen