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Jane Frost, head of HM Revenue & Customs’ Individuals Customer Directorate, explains how HMRC’s new Charter aims to improve relations between the department and its customers.

What can You Expect from your Dealings with HM Revenue & Customs? And What do We Expect from You?

Well, we want to give you a service that is even-handed, accurate and based on mutual trust and respect. We also want to make it as easy as we can for you to get things right.

To this end, our new Charter sets out to clarify our customers’ rights – what people, businesses and others dealing with HMRC can expect from the department, as well as their responsibilities – what we expect from them.

Our key aim is to improve the relationship between HMRC and our customers, which include individuals, businesses and other groups. However, we can’t do this on our own, which is why the Charter sets out customers’ responsibilities, as well as their rights.

Under the Charter, HMRC commits to: respecting you; helping and supporting you to get things right; treating you as honest; treating you even-handedly; being professional and acting with integrity; tackling people who deliberately break the rules and challenging those who bend the rules; protecting your information and respecting your privacy; accepting that someone else can represent you; doing all we can to keep the cost of dealing with us as low as possible.

In return, HMRC expects you to be honest; respect our staff, and take care to get things right.

The Charter also provides further information on your rights, on where you can get help and support and about HMRC’s role.

Will it Make a Difference?

Alongside the Charter, we also launched a new podcast, featuring HMRC’s Permanent Secretary for Tax, Dave Hartnett. In answering a question about whether the Charter will make a difference to the services that customers actually receive from HMRC, Dave had this to say:

“We strongly believe that it will – that’s really the whole point of the exercise, and we’ve consulted all along the way to make sure it will make a difference.

On a practical level, the Charter will help make it easier for individuals and businesses to interact with HMRC. And that should bring benefits to our customers and to HMRC, in terms of reducing the time and resources needed to deal with particular issues.

The Charter is part of a wider government commitment to making the tax system as useable and accessible as possible for the individuals, businesses and all the other organisations that interact with it.”

How do I Get Hold of the Charter?

The four-page document, entitled ‘HMRC – Your Charter’, can be downloaded from the HMRC website at HM Revenue & Customs: Your Charter.

Customers unable to access the Internet can obtain a copy in the following formats: British Sign Language DVD, Braille, large print, audio cassette or CD by calling 020 7147 2365. Paper copies are available from local enquiry centres.

Dave Hartnett’s free, five-minute podcast can be downloaded from HMRC’s podcast pages at HMRC Podcasts