Overview
- Official data released Monday show HMRC now takes an average of 40 days to respond to an initial complaint, up from about 29.6 days four years earlier and the longest wait in five years.
- First-stage complaints have climbed to roughly 93,600 in 2024–25 while complaints that record both a mistake and a delay surged to 12,670, a 66% rise from the prior year.
- HMRC says the increase was largely caused by a child-benefit payments issue and that more recent measures have cut phone waits to about 10 minutes and pushed satisfaction toward 80 percent.
- Critics note HMRC has added about 3,000 staff and shifted hiring toward investigators and enforcement, which they say has left customer-facing support thin and left taxpayers waiting for refunds or facing penalties.
- Tax professionals and MPs point to concrete harms — months-long or multi-year refund waits and small compensatory offers — and the Public Accounts Committee has warned customer service is at an all-time low, so ministers must set out how they will speed up redress and reduce penalty risk.