HMRC welcomes National Audit Office report on its effectiveness

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) welcomed the report by the National Audit Office published today, which recognised the progress the department has made over the past five years in increasing revenues, reducing costs and improving customer service.

HMRC Chief Executive Lin Homer said:

“The National Audit Office’s report properly recognises the considerable progress we have made in strengthening our performance, capability and powers in increasing compliance revenues, reducing costs and improving services to customers.

“In the five years from 2010, HMRC will have collected more than £2.4 trillion to pay for the UK’s public services.

“We have used £1 billion of government investment to secure more than £100 billion in additional compliance revenues, by cracking down on tax avoidance, evasion, debt, error, fraud and organised crime.

“We have spearheaded the global drive against international tax evasion and are leading players in the inter-governmental efforts to reform the international corporate tax framework, and reduce profit shifting by multinationals.

“We have prosecuted 2,650 people for tax offences, closed down thousands of tax avoidance schemes, won around 80 per cent of legal cases in tribunals and improved how we settle tax disputes.

“We have significantly improved our customer services from a low point in 2010-11, increasing our performance in answering calls from 48 per cent to almost 80 per cent, in clearing post within 15 days from 51 per cent to more than 80 per cent and the accuracy of PAYE tax codes from 80 per cent to 98 per cent.

“We accept that we are still not consistently providing the right levels of service, which is why we are accelerating our investment in digitisation to provide the much more modern services that customers now expect.

“We have also delivered major new projects, including Real Time Information, which has brought PAYE up to date for the first time in 70 years, and important new policies for the Government, including the Employment Allowance and High Income Child Benefit Charge.

“At the same time, we have reduced our workforce by around 10,000 and our estate by around 300 offices and will have delivered around £1.2 billion in cost efficiencies by 2016.

Notes for editors

1. A summary of HMRC’s achievements from 2010-11 to 2015

• Between 2010-11 and the end of March 2015, we will have collected more than £2.4 trillion in tax revenues for the UK, including more than £100 billion in additional compliance revenues
• We’ve secured £31 billion in tax as a result of interventions with large businesses since 2010
• Our criminal investigations have protected £4.1 billion since 2011, and resulted in 2,650 prosecutions and 2,718 years of custodial sentences
• Our High Net Worth Unit has collected £852 million from the UK’s wealthiest people
• We’ve brought in £267 million from 13 campaigns since 2010, by targeting the sectors of the economy that present the greatest risk of tax loss
• We’ve brought in £156 million from 70 taskforces since 2011, by targeting tax evaders in different parts of the country
• We’ve won around 80 per cent of tax avoidance cases we’ve taken to tribunals
• The Swiss tax agreement has brought in more than £1 billion from accounts hidden in Switzerland, and the Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility has also brought in around £1 billion
• We’ve delivered £775 million in sustainable cost savings between 2011-12 and 2013-14, and are on track to deliver on our target of just under £1.2 billion in savings by March 2016
• We’ve increased the proportion of people who file Self Assessment returns online from 84.5 per cent in 2010-11 to 85.5 per cent in 2014-15

2010-11

• We secured £917 million reinvestment from the government to tackle tax dodging as part of the 2010 Spending Settlement, at a time when most other departments’ budgets were cut
• We launched the HMRC Tax Academy to develop professional skills among our 18,000 tax professionals
• Our National Insurance, PAYE and Self Assessment (NPS) computer system went live, bringing together 12 separate systems into one, heralding the most radical transformation of PAYE since it was introduced in 1944

2011-12

• We signed an unprecedented agreement between the UK and Switzerland, ensuring that previously-untaxed assets hidden in Switzerland would start to pay tax to the UK from 2013
• We launched the first of 70 tax taskforces, to intervene directly in areas of the economy where evasion is suspected
• We stopped more than £1 billion of fraudulent and incorrect tax credit payments
• We launched the Affluent Unit, to ensure that the better off pay their fair share
• We cut our carbon emissions by 13.4 per cent, or 22,408 tonnes, beating our target by more than 3 per cent
• HMRC staff donated a record £872,825 for good causes, making HMRC the top public sector organisation of the year, winning the 2011 National Payroll Giving Excellence Awards
• We won the Institute of Fundraising’s Gold Award for effectively promoting the benefits of Payroll Giving

2012-13

• We cleared the backlog of 18 million historical PAYE underpayments and overpayments uncovered by NPS ahead of timetable
• We achieved 85 per cent of post turned around within 15 working days, recovering from a low of 51 per cent in 2010-11
• We launched the 'Most Wanted' list of tax evaders on Flickr, highlighting people who had been sentenced for tax fraud before absconding. The site has been viewed 3.2 million times and has helped bring at least seven criminals back to justice
• We appointed a Tax Assurance Commissioner and reformed the governance of tax settlements, delivering much greater transparency and addressing public concerns about large business and tax
• We invested £80 million in the ground-breaking Connect computer system, to bring together a billion pieces of previously-unconnected data to identify tax cheats and bring in an extra £3 billion in tax. Connect won Project Of The Year at the 2012 National Outsourcing Awards

2013-14

• We established a new Counter Avoidance Directorate – a specialist team focused on tackling all forms of tax avoidance
• We secured a further £200 million from the government to invest in digital services
• We successfully introduced Real Time Information for PAYE, reducing both employer costs and the scope for under and overpayments. Virtually all employers and pension providers now report in real time, and coding notices are now 98 per cent accurate, up from 80 per cent in 2010
• We introduced new speech recognition technology and self-service telephone options, designed to reduce contact centre waiting times and ensure callers get the help they need first time. By the end of the year the service had handled 7.4 million calls
• We received the first down-payment of £342 million under the Swiss tax agreement
• We introduced ‘flexible resourcing’ to deploy additional staff from other business areas to support contact centres in dealing with call demand in the run-up to the Self Assessment and Tax Credits deadlines
• We successfully introduced the High Income Child Benefit Charge (HICBC), to recover some or all Child Benefit paid to couples with a partner earning more than £50,000
• We placed 5,200 people on our Managing Deliberate Defaulters programme, to ensure that those who deliberately flout the rules don’t get away with it
• We gave up 60,000 m³ of estate space, as part of £235 million in cost efficiencies
• We reduced Tax Credits error and fraud to 7.0 per cent – the lowest-ever level

2014-15

• We launched network of mobile advisers to support customers who need extra help
• We launched the Employment Allowance, giving employers a National Insurance rebate of up to £2,000 a year
• We successfully trialled ‘once and done’ phone service, enabling advisers to deal with multiple issues in one call, instead of referring customers to other departments
• We moved all helplines to '03' numbers meaning much cheaper calls for most callers
• We opened the first HMRC Digital Delivery Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne
• We developed and launched an online Tax Credits renewals service in just eight weeks, used by 410,000 in the July 2014 renewals
• We launched @HMRCcustomers Twitter account to answer general questions via social media
• We launched Your Tax Account for businesses – gaining two million subscribers by 31 January
• We achieved a record Self Assessment result, with 10.24 million tax returns submitted by midnight on 31 January

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3. HMRC's Flickr channel www.flickr.com/hmrc.gov.uk