As part of this joint working initiative, HMRC works closely with professional bodies, charities and businesses to improve customers’ experiences of dealing with the Department. For example, back in April, we blogged about our work with professional bodies to make improvements on Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) repayments.
During the tax year 2013 to 2014 we made many more improvements for customers, including agents:
Contact Centres
We invested an additional £34 million and redeployed 1000 extra staff to contact centres - enabling us to answer 78.4 per cent of calls between April 2013 and February 2014. This is up 4.1 per cent on the same period in the previous tax year.
Post
From April 2013 to February 2014, we cleared 84 per cent of post within 15 working days – exceeding our target of 80 per cent.
R40 claims for repayment of tax deducted from savings and investments
We ran a pilot to test filing R40 returns online. Agents have used their software products to send clients’ income information online, which has lead to faster repayment claims.
CIS repayments update
We no longer pursue debts where a CIS repayment can be set against tax due. We have introduced new technology to provide our staff with up-to-date information.
Penalties
For tax year 2012 to 2013, we sent extra reminders and letters to prompt our customers to avoid or minimise P35 end of year penalties.
Agent authorisation process
We have improved this (64-8) process, resulting in quicker turnaround times.
Helpline for bereaved PAYE and SA customers
This gives advice on what to do about Income Tax and Self Assessment after a death, and ensures that the affairs of a surviving partner are reviewed at the same time as the deceased’s
What next?
We want to build on these successes. For example, we’ll be monitoring our CIS repayment arrangements, to ensure they work even better this year.
We hope you’ll agree that these changes will make a real difference for agents - we’d be very interested to hear your views through this blog.
1 comment
Comment by Jodie posted on
This is interesting, seen as one of my clients who is waiting for a CIS repayment to be offset against PAYE 2012/13 and 2013/14 and yet yesterday she has been sent a demand to pay their tax due of £2.4k. HMRC owe her £1k!!! Not so quick at giving it back are they!