Susan Love

The decline has strained relationships between HMRC, compliant taxpayers and their agents, according to Ms Love.

Emphasising the importance of transparency and accountability in fostering tax morale and engagement, she said: “This applies across the board, and tax authorities should be every bit as transparent and accountable as taxpayers and the agents who support them.”

In her comments, she also highlighted the need for stability, alongside certainty and simplicity in the tax system, criticising the prevalent poorly planned, communicated and executed changes. These last-minute modifications, she pointed out, have undermined the confidence of taxpayers, agents and other stakeholders.

Ms Love added: “ACCA’s members are keen to see more detailed improvement plans for HMRC service standards as a matter of urgency. Closer partnership working with professional bodies, such as ACCA, could help highlight and prioritise areas for improvement including efficiencies that could be gained through improving access to certain information and functions for professionals.”

Although ACCA acknowledges existing improvement plans at HMRC, Love expresses scepticism about their effectiveness without additional measures.

Ms Love suggested HMRC should consider the follow additional measures:

• Value of professionally regulated agents – government and HMRC should recognise the value of timesaving and trust offered by professionally regulated agents. HMRC should seek to enable professionally regulated agents to provide services which can provide time and resource savings for HMRC, for example, altering information such as tax codes.
• Partnership – building on the work of the Charter Stakeholder Group, partnership and trust between HMRC and professional bodies should be built upon to quickly identify and address areas of concern, particularly where they waste time and resources for taxpayers, their agents and HMRC.’