The services offered by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) are either ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’, according to a survey of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).
Earlier this week, a study carried out by Simply Business found that more than half of small business owners across Britain were ‘dissatisfied’ with HMRC’s services.
The news comes shortly after six consultation documents into HMRC’s ongoing systems overhaul, Making Tax Digital (MTD), revealed that small firms and self-employed taxpayers are soon to be burdened by increased tax reporting requirements – unless their income is less than a measly £10,000 a year.
Under new proposals, businesses and self-employed individuals will need to submit tax information to HMRC four times a year, according to consultations.
35 per cent of British SME owners told Simply Business that they thought HMRC’s offerings were ‘very bad’, while a further 21 per cent described the Revenue’s facilities as ‘bad’.
The cynicism follows controversial reports surrounding the tax authority’s poor telephone services, which are fast-diminishing in the wake of MTD.
In 2015, HMRC reportedly cost tax payers some £97 million by keeping business owners on hold when they ‘could have been attending to business’, the National Audit Office (NAO) reported.
The NAO adapted the Revenue’s own criteria to calculate the average value of each caller’s time spent on hold – which it said was approximately £17 per hour.