The administrative burdens advisory board (ABAB) has 
released the results of its “Tell ABAB” facility which received more 
than 2,000 responses from business owners and accountants.
ABAB is an independent board that seeks 
to bring a business perspective to HMRC’s work.
AccountingWEB have summarised the results. 
Once and done
Communicating with HMRC remains the biggest bugbear.
 However, the report identified two initiatives HMRC implemented to 
ameliorate the poor service levels. First, is a change of service 
philosophy to something HMRC is calling “The once & done project”.
“[It]
 has been developed to deliver process changes that allow Call Handlers 
to deal with more the first time around, reducing the need for you to 
write to HMRC, for HMRC to write to you, and for HMRC to ‘hand off’ 
questions between its own staff.” 
HMRC will now 
implement a “phone first” policy, too. Phone first will allow HMRC staff
 members to phone you for clarification or additional information 
regarding the correspondence subject.
Up to 2,000 respondents also
 indicated a very strong desire to access other, non-traditional 
channels of communication.
Making Tax 
Digital was offered as a remedy for HMRC’s communication woes. 
“It
 brings together access to all key online services, guidance and 
information providing a joined-up experience for you, giving you the 
ability to perform a number of transactions with HMRC in a single 
place.”
HMRC is apparently trialling a clutch of new digital 
communications, including “Web chat” for those with SA queries, a 
“virtual assistant” for the online services helpdesk, and a move from 
paper to “secure digital messaging via your digital tax account”.
Agent online self-serve
AOSS,
 according to HMRC, will revolutionise the way agents deal with them. 
The service is currently being beta tested by a select group of 1,500 
accountants. But, according to the report, there’s an “intention to 
extend this group during the remainder of 2015/16”.
Other results
In
 ABAB’s survey results, respondents identified several other categories 
of particular strain when dealing with HMRC:
- Personalisation: “You
 want your tax affairs to be all in one place and for HMRC ‘departments’
 to be much more joined-up. There is also a need to only receive what is
 relevant to you targeted to your specific business/circumstances.”
- Digital: “Those of you who are online want to do more online and have suggested ways to make specific tasks easier.”
- HMRC attitude and approach to small businesses:
 “You want HMRC to better understand the day to day pressures you face 
running your small business and to have more empathy when dealing with 
you.”
- Policy & legislation: “You want 
Government policies and legislation to be modernised and simplified, 
recognising the needs of small business so to encourage innovation and 
growth.”
- Processes & systems: “You want clearer guidance and greater consistency across specific services such as VAT, CIS.”
- Payments & refunds: “You want the mechanisms and policies for payments and refunds to work better for you and your business.”
- General admin burdens:
 “You want to spend less time on tax administration and to have greater 
consistency across different taxes to reduce the burden in running your 
business.”
- Working with agents: “You want agents to be able to deal with HMRC on behalf of your business more easily.”
All these initiatives sound very jolly. The question is, will they work, and will they be properly implemented?
As ever, please feel free to share your views and opinions.
Tax does have to be taxing.
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