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Where Taxpayers and Advisers Meet
Editorial: HMRC Contact Centres - It's Not Just About Speed
12/08/2012, by Mark McLaughlin CTA (Fellow) ATT TEP, Tax Articles - General
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HMRC Contact Centres - It's Not Just About Speed

Mark McLaughlin casts a critical eye over HMRC's recent promise to increase call centre resources.

I was pleased to see the recent announcement by Lin Homer, HMRC's Chief Executive, that an additional £9 million is being invested this year in recruiting up to 1,000 additional contact centre staff, with a further £25 million being spent during 2013/14, with a view to bringing HMRC contact centres up to speed two years earlier than originally planned.

A couple of things struck me about the HMRC News Release of Lin Homer's announcement. The first was her comment: "The feedback we get is that the quality of the advice we give when people get through is good". I must confess that I very rarely use HMRC contact centres, but I have colleagues that do. The feedback and anecdotal evidence that I have received suggests that the level of technical knowledge of some contact centre staff leaves something to be desired. That is by no means a reflection on those staff, but on the quality of training and technical support provided to them by HMRC.

Personally, if faced with a choice between speed or accuracy in my dealings with HMRC, I would go for accuracy every time.

The second point to note was Lon Homer's admission that: “I am reprioritising our resources to make this additional investment possible, without impacting our other core customer services." This sounds to me like HMRC will be making cutbacks elsewhere to fund these additional contact centre staff. Given my earlier comment about accuracy over speed, one can only hope that "reprioritising our resources" doesn't mean a reduction in HMRC's education and training budget!

The recruitment of additional HMRC contact centre staff is clearly a step in the right direction, and should be welcomed as such. However, my biggest hope is that when taxpayers and agents get through to HMRC more quickly in the future, the help that they are looking for is delivered fully and accurately.

The above News Release can be dowloaded from HMRC's website: Lin Homer Announces Up to £34 Million Investment to Achieve HMRC Call Targets Two Years Early

Best wishes,

Mark McLaughlin

Managing Editor

About The Author

Mark McLaughlin is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, a Fellow of the Association of Taxation Technicians, and a member of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. From January 1998 until December 2018, Mark was a consultant in his own tax practice, Mark McLaughlin Associates, which provided tax consultancy and support services to professional firms throughout the UK.

He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation’s Capital Gains Tax & Investment Income and Succession Taxes Sub-Committees.

Mark is editor and a co-author of HMRC Investigations Handbook (Bloomsbury Professional).

Mark is Chief Contributor to McLaughlin’s Tax Case Review, a monthly journal published by Tax Insider.

Mark is the Editor of the Core Tax Annuals (Bloomsbury Professional), and is a co-author of the ‘Inheritance Tax’ Annuals (Bloomsbury Professional).

Mark is Editor and a co-author of ‘Tax Planning’ (Bloomsbury Professional).

He is a co-author of ‘Ray & McLaughlin’s Practical IHT Planning’ (Bloomsbury Professional)

Mark is a Consultant Editor with Bloomsbury Professional, and co-author of ‘Incorporating and Disincorporating a Business’.

Mark has also written numerous articles for professional publications, including ‘Taxation’, ‘Tax Adviser’, ‘Tolley’s Practical Tax Newsletter’ and ‘Tax Journal’.

Mark is a Director of Tax Insider, and Editor of Tax Insider, Property Tax Insider and Business Tax Insider, which are monthly publications aimed at providing tax tips and tax saving ideas for taxpayers and professional advisers. He is also Editor of Tax Insider Professional, a monthly publication for professional practitioners.

Mark is also a tax lecturer, and has featured in online tax lectures for Tolley Seminars Online.

Mark co-founded TaxationWeb (www.taxationweb.co.uk) in 2002.

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les35 14/08/2012 16:05

Mark is right! The big problem with providing information in the way that HMRC do is that you can only give the right answer if you ask the right questions. That takes experience as well as training. Many of the current staff are quite keen but not experienced in real VAT life.<br /> They should improve their training by having input from the private sector, to help the advisors to understand how taxpayers think.