Most taxpayers, whether they’re an individual submitting a self assessment tax return or paying corporation tax behalf of business, will have a view on HMRC and
their interactions with its officers.
HMRC’s Charter is a legal requirement under the Finance Act 2009 section 92. The legislation states that the charter ‘must include standards of behaviour and values to which Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will aspire when dealing with people in the exercise of their functions’.
Legislation also says the charter must be reviewed regularly and revisions published. The last charter review was completed in August 2015.
HMRC began work to review the charter in September 2019 and is also informed by the recommendation made by the Loan Charge Review in December 2019 that HMRC’s Charter be reviewed ‘to set higher expectations of performance during interactions with members of the public and ensure that staff are offered training on how to deliver it’.
The charter review also supports recommendations from the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee report ‘The Powers of HMRC: Treating Taxpayers Fairly’ in December 2018. This report recommended that ‘the Charter is amended to clarify HMRC’s responsibilities towards unrepresented taxpayers including that issues are clearly set out, legislation is explained and rights to review and appeals are made accessible’.
Over the last 3 months, we have reviewed HMRC’s Charter using various methods including:
- reviewing existing insight, such as HMRC’s annual customer surveys, on what matters most to customers
- researching other customer charters and customer promises in organisations that are similar to HMRC
- holding several face-to-face round table events where frontline HMRC employees and customers worked together to discuss the current charter and say what is most important to them
- consulting with internal forums and external stakeholder forums across HMRC
- discussing charter ambition and obligations at HMRC’s Customer Experience Committee, which replaced the Charter Committee in autumn 2018
HMRC has drafted a revised charter which it is now putting out to public consultation.
The revised draft charter aims to take account of views we have received so far for example that any the revised charter:
- is short and direct with simple, accessible language
- embodies or represents HMRC’s values: being professional, acting with integrity, showing respect and being innovative
- is more focussed on HMRC’s commitments to customers, while not losing sight of customers’ obligations to HMRC
The consultation period will run from Monday 24 February to Friday 15 May 2020 and you can find out more on the .Gov website.
