Richard Mannion, national tax director at Smith & Williamson, the accountancy and investment management group, highlights three key areas on which he urges HMRC to focus. These are:

• a simplification of the tax code generally;
• improved level of customer service for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the ‘average’ taxpayer;
• boost technical training for tax inspectors, particularly in dealing with the breadth of taxes faced by SMEs.

Richard comments:

Simplification of the tax code

There is a clear  need to simplify the tax code generally and it is widely recognised that the UK tax system  needs radical reform. The OTS review of tax reliefs led to the chopping of 100 pages of redundant legislation, but that small saving was immediately swamped by the extra 400 pages resulting from the 2011 Finance Bill.

Boost technical training

HMRC also needs to provide good technical training across the whole range of taxes so that its staff can advise on the full range of issues that a small businessman has to contend with in the areas of business tax, PAYE, VAT, National Minimum Wages, Statutory Maternity Pay etc.

Address customer service

The next major aim must be to improve HMRC’s performance. As is the case with many mergers over history, the combination of the old Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise has arguably back-fired. The merger promised to provide significant operational efficiencies, but in reality it has resulted in major job cuts, which in turn has led to a spiralling vicious circle of poor customer service and falling staff morale which now seems to have hit rock-bottom.

HMRC is currently recognised for providing a good service for large businesses and it is endeavouring to improve the service provided to the wealthiest taxpayers, but this seems to have been at the expense of its service levels to smaller and medium businesses and ‘average’ personal taxpayer. HMRC now needs to get back to basics with regard to its service levels to the vast majority of taxpayers who don’t fall into one of those specialist areas.

It also needs to provide its staff with some good customer service training which recognises taxpayers as customers. This is not rocket science – it’s all about ensuring the telephone is answered with a helpful and patient attitude, and post is opened on receipt and dealt with fully and correctly within a short time-frame (ie all those simple things which HMRC currently finds so difficult to do).