Corporate report

HMRC's annual report and accounts 2024 to 2025: Chief Executive’s performance report

Published 17 July 2025

This report provides an overview and analysis of our performance in 2024
 to 2025, including information about our new strategic objectives and our progress in delivering against the priorities set by the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury.

Our new strategic objectives

Following last July’s change of government, we refocused some of our activities to ensure we were delivering against the 3 priorities set for us by the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury. We also updated HMRC’s strategic objectives, to guide us through the Spending Review period. They build on the progress we’ve already made and reflect how we’re meeting the government’s challenge for the Civil Service to be more productive, agile and efficient in serving the British public.

Our strategic objectives set out what we will do over the coming years to achieve our vision:

• close the tax gap
• improve day-to-day performance and the overall customer experience
• reform and modernise Tax and Customs administration
• build a high-performing organisation, with a skilled and engaged workforce
• support wider government economic aims through HMRC’s work

Closing the tax gap

In this chapter we report on our work in 2024 to 2025 on closing the tax gap, including what we’ve done to make it easier for our customers to meet their tax obligations and prevent non-compliance.

“Our compliance work secured a record £48.0 billion of tax revenue in 2024 to 2025, up from £41.8 billion in the previous financial year. An increasing proportion of this comes from our work to step in earlier to help customers get it right first time, or prevent people getting it wrong.

This offers a better experience for our customers, stops deliberate non-compliance as early as possible, and frees up our compliance professionals to focus on those who choose to deliberately try to pay less than they should, or claim money to which they are not entitled.

The investment announced at Autumn Budget and Spring Statement to help us close the tax gap has seen us welcome over 500 of the 5,500 additional compliance officers by 2029 to 2030, and we have begun laying the foundations for the modernisation of our IT and data infrastructure, which will allow us to be more digital, and more efficient and effective.”

Penny Ciniewicz
Director General, Customer Compliance Group

How we are working to close the tax gap

We already bring in around 95% of the tax that’s due, according to the latest available estimate for the UK’s tax gap (2023 to 2024) — and in 2024 to 2025 we brought in £48.0 billion of tax that would have gone unpaid if HMRC hadn’t stepped in. Most tax is paid in full and on time, either automatically through PAYE, customers self-serving by using our online services, or by using third party software. However, non-compliance still happens for a variety of reasons, from honest mistakes to deliberate evasion. Our compliance work aims to make sure everyone pays the right amount of tax and takes many forms, from prompting customers to avoid common mistakes to investigating cases of international tax fraud.

But we face challenges. The number of taxpayers in the system is growing, and more of them have increasingly complex tax affairs. Both the global economy and the world of work have changed significantly in the last decade. This is an age of multiple incomes, side hustles, digital transactions, artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies. As the economy and our customers’ working patterns evolve, so must our compliance approach.

In response to these challenges, we are prioritising the prevention of non-compliance and promotion of good compliance. We call this ‘upstream compliance’ as it increases the likelihood of customers getting things right before they submit their tax return or makes it harder for them to get it wrong. This approach includes changing policies and processes, providing clear guidance, building user-friendly digital interfaces, improving the quality and standard of tax intermediaries, and nudging customers to file correctly.

We are recruiting an additional 5,500 caseworkers into our compliance workforce and expect this investment to help us raise an additional £6.8 billion of tax revenue over the next 5 years. In 2024 to 2025, our first year of growth, we recruited over 500 new compliance officers, from trainees to more experienced external tax specialists, who will strengthen HMRC’s expertise in managing complex tax risks. We’re also boosting our criminal investigation capacity, by training new recruits in criminal justice skills, through HMRC’s Counter Fraud Academy.

Figure 1: Compliance yield (note)

In 2024 to 2025, we secured £48.0 billion of ‘compliance yield’, which is revenue that we have collected and protected that would have been lost to the Exchequer without our interventions. This exceeded our annual target of £45.4 billion, which is set to be consistent with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s economic forecasts and the assumptions they make about a stable tax gap. Our compliance work returned, on average, £23 for every £1 spent on our compliance workforce in 2024 to 2025.

Compliance yield from activities designed to promote compliance, prevent errors from occurring, and the deterrence of our litigation activity (known as ‘upstream compliance’) has grown as a proportion of our compliance yield target from 24% in 2019 to 2020 to 43% in 2024 to 2025. Compliance yield consists of several components as shown below.

Note: Numbers may appear not to sum due to rounding.

Upstream product and process yield: estimated annual impact on net tax receipts of legislative changes to close tax loopholes and changes to our processes which reduce opportunities to avoid or evade tax.

Future revenue benefit: estimated effect of our past compliance work on customers’ compliance in the current tax year.

Revenue losses prevented: revenue that we prevented from being lost to the Exchequer through our compliance work, such as where a fraudulent or erroneous claim to a relief or repayment is either reduced or refused. It also recognises the estimated value of refused registrations, disruption of criminal activity and the revenue value of seized goods.

Upstream operational yield: estimated impact of operational activities undertaken to promote compliance and prevent non-compliance before it occurs. Does not include yield from legislative or process changes.

Cash expected: additional revenue due when we identify past non-compliance, with a reduction to reflect revenue that we estimate will not be collected. Cash expected for 2020 to 2021 also includes accelerated payments.

Read more in our technical notes on compliance yield and tax by different customer groups on GOV.UK.

Read our latest tax gap report on GOV.UK.

How we are helping customers to get their tax right

Error and ‘failure to take reasonable care’ are still the main reasons for customers not paying the right amount of tax. That’s why our focus remains on making sure as many customers as possible get their tax right from the outset, reducing the need for us to step in and fix problems after they have filed their tax return.

We want to do much more of this. Besides delivering more of what our customers need through quick and easy to use online channels, we continuously improve our guidance and we’re expanding our approach to educating citizens about their tax obligations. Providing accurate, consistent and clear information to customers is a key element of the HMRC Charter.

You can read more in the section Improving day-to-day performance and the experience of our customers.

In 2024 to 2025, we worked with customers and their representatives to help small businesses get their tax right, including:

• a new tool and guidance to help the self-employed understand what taxes may apply to them depending on their circumstances, helping them plan for their tax bill and what records to keep
• guidance and general education campaigns to help people understand when they pay tax on additional income from other sources — such as side jobs, hobbies, online platforms or starting a small business
• supporting over 600,000 small business customers with a nudge towards simplified guidance, helping them correctly account for the private use of business expenses at the point of filing their Self Assessment return

We estimate that this, and other work to improve guidance, has helped increase the number of customers who use our guidance without then going onto one of our ‘contact us’ pages, within 5 days, to over 95%.

We continued to promote good compliance by increasing our customers’ understanding of tax through targeted tax education campaigns. These included writing to remind new landlords to register for Self Assessment and delivering an educational programme to support employers with their National Minimum Wage obligations. We also continued raising awareness and understanding of tax among children and young people through our award-winning Tax Facts programme. In 2024 to 2025, our Tax Facts materials were downloaded 9,000 times, and colleagues delivered 270 sessions to an estimated 20,000 young people.

Simplifying and modernising tax administration

In 2024 to 2025 we:

• announced in March that Income Tax Self Assessment reporting thresholds for trading income will rise to £3,000 during this Parliament, meaning up to 300,000 taxpayers will no longer be required to file a tax return
• launched the Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax test service in readiness for the service going live for mandated customers with over £50,000 qualifying income from April 2026 [read more in the section: Reforming and modernising Tax and Customs administration]
• announced the expansion of MTD for Income Tax to sole traders and landlords with income over £20,000 from April 2028
• helped customers get their tax right through digital ‘nudges’, which highlight to customers if they enter data that differs from what we’re expecting. These nudges have helped more than 6 million customers pay the right tax at the right time in 2024 to 2025 — resulting in over £448 million of additional tax being paid
• required online marketplaces, such as Vinted and eBay, to collect and verify information on their users and share this with HMRC. This helps sellers to keep track of the total income they have generated from these online platforms, enabling them to complete their returns more accurately

Helping customers not to get caught out by tax avoidance

Tax avoidance involves ‘bending’ tax rules to try and gain a tax advantage that was never intended by Parliament and denies funds for our vital public services. Most tax avoidance schemes simply do not work to save tax and those who use them may end up paying more than the tax they tried to avoid, including penalties and interest.

We use a variety of legislation and tools to challenge promoters and others in the tax avoidance supply chain. Our work has led to a number of organisations that promote tax avoidance leaving the marketplace entirely. And when others start up, we use our powers to quickly shut down their schemes too. We also regularly publish information on tax avoidance schemes, those who promote them and others connected to avoidance schemes, to help customers identify and steer clear of them, or leave them.

In 2024 to 2025, we published the details of 83 tax avoidance schemes, 82 promoters, and 26 connected persons such as directors and those in control of the promoting entity. We also issued 40 stop notices to promoters, requiring them to stop promoting the tax avoidance scheme specified in the notice. Promoters may face penalties of over £1 million if they do not comply with the stop notice, and possible criminal sanctions if they continue to sell the scheme after receiving a stop notice.

In 2024 to 2025, we refreshed our ‘Don’t get caught out’ tax avoidance campaign, introducing new content on social media and other platforms. We also wrote to those who we suspected of being involved in avoidance, advising them of the risks and urging them to speak to us if they wanted to leave the avoidance scheme.

Following announcements at Autumn Budget 2024, the government launched a consultation on 26 March 2025 on a package of measures to close in on promoters of tax avoidance, including new powers focused on those who own or control promoter organisations and exploring options to tackle legal professionals behind avoidance schemes.

We publish the names of tax avoidance schemes, promoters, enablers and suppliers on GOV.UK.

Raising standards in the tax advice market

There are approximately 85,000 tax advice firms in the UK, providing advice and services to 12 million taxpayers. High-quality tax advisers are crucial partners for HMRC in tax administration. We want taxpayers to have confidence that any adviser they choose will help them get their tax right, and we want to stop the minority who cause disproportionate harm to the tax system by assisting the non-compliance of their clients.

We have taken action to raise standards in the tax advice market and improve the service HMRC provides to tax advisers. At Autumn Budget 2024, the government announced mandatory registration of all tax advisers who interact with HMRC. This will help to ensure that advisers meet a minimum standard. We have also introduced a new requirement, from April 2025, for advisers to obtain an advanced electronic signature from their client if they wish to use the nominations process for certain income tax repayment forms. This gives greater assurance to both HMRC and the taxpayer that the customer has authorised the tax adviser to submit the claim and receive the payment.

HMRC’s Standard for Agents, updated in May 2024, clearly sets out the expectations of all professional tax advisers when interacting with HMRC. The Standard also sets out how we will respond when advisers do not meet these expectations. In 2024 to 2025, we suspended or blocked access to HMRC services 1,285 times and made 43 public interest disclosures concerning misconduct to the relevant professional body. We also conducted 183 investigations into the tax affairs of advisers, generating £1.75 million in compliance yield.

While HMRC has existing powers to tackle tax advisers who harm the tax system, they are not always suitable in all cases. That is why the government recently consulted, from March to May 2025, on options to enhance HMRC’s powers to take swifter and stronger action against advisers who facilitate non-compliance in their clients’ tax affairs. The government is grateful for contributions made to the consultation and will respond in due course.

Read the consultation document on GOV.UK.

Addressing non-compliance

Alongside preventing non-compliance from occurring in the first place, we are continually evolving our approach to fixing mistakes after they have been made. For example, in 2024 to 2025, we wrote to 243,000 individuals asking them to check and amend Self Assessment returns for previous years where we believe they had been completed incorrectly or were missing. We also carry out compliance checks to ensure the right tax is paid and ensure a level playing field for everyone. In 2024 to 2025, we completed 316,000 compliance checks.

In cases where we believe a business or individual is deliberately not complying or trying to cheat or defraud the tax system, we use a range of civil and criminal powers and specialist investigative capabilities to recover the money owed.

In 2024 to 2025 we received 164,670 reports of alleged fraud from the public via our Fraud Reporting Gateway, where we assess all reports and take relevant action. There are times when it is in the public interest for us to make payments to people for providing us with information, and this year, these payments were worth a total of £852,438.

Information on reporting tax fraud or avoidance to HMRC can be found on GOV.UK.

Policies to drive compliance

New policies were announced in 2024 to 2025 to help close the tax gap. These included:

• amending anti-avoidance rules to ensure shareholders cannot extract funds untaxed from closed companies
• changing tax rules on liquidations to ensure that the gains preceding contribution of an asset into a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP), are taxed when the LLP liquidates and the assets are disposed of
• preventing non-compliance from the transfer overseas of UK tax-relieved pension funds, by removing the exclusion from the Overseas Transfer Charge for transfers to Qualifying Recognised Overseas Pension Schemes in the European Economic Area or Gibraltar — this addresses the risk of individuals receiving double tax-free allowances

Tackling serious fraud and economic crime

HMRC has extensive powers and specialist investigation capabilities to uncover the most complex and determined frauds. We focus our resources on where we can deliver the greatest impact. Usually, that means using our civil powers to assess tax and civil penalties, including imposing fines of up to 200% of the tax liable. Our Fraud Investigation Service tackles the most high-value, high-harm fraud cases. In 2024 to 2025 we opened over 11,000 new civil investigations into suspected fraud.

We will also open criminal investigations, seeking prosecutions and confiscations to recover the proceeds of crime, where they are an effective, proportionate or necessary response. The number of criminal investigations opened increased by 3.7% compared to 2023 to 2024. This year we:

• opened 446 new criminal investigations
• achieved 557 positive charging decisions and 310 prosecutions brought as a result of our criminal investigations, securing 281 convictions with a 91% success rate in court
• had 275 individuals under criminal investigation as part of our work to tackle wealthy tax evaders
• secured and protected £2,430 million from our civil work and £1,516 million from our criminal investigations
• recovered £191 million from the proceeds of crime and our Code of Practice 9 civil investigations

At Autumn Budget 2024, the government announced investment in HMRC’s compliance work which will include increasing the size of our Fraud Investigation Service, enabling us to do even more to tackle the highest value and most harmful tax fraud. Additionally, investment in counter-fraud technology, including digital tools, analytics, and automation, means HMRC will be better able to keep one step ahead of organised criminals who are increasingly using technology to commit ever-more sophisticated frauds and transfer illicit funds through global financial systems.

Read more about our Fraud Investigation Service’s approach to tax compliance and fraud in our technical note on GOV.UK.

Tackling offshore tax evasion — case study

Two property developers were handed prison sentences, fined and disqualified as company directors for stealing more than £3.2 million in an offshore tax scam. They used offshore companies in overseas territories to hide money from the sale of land to evade paying tax.

As part of HMRC’s Code of Practice 9 process, they were offered the chance to come clean about their tax affairs, but they failed to respond in full, so the investigation was converted to a criminal enquiry.

HMRC investigators proved that offshore companies were used to facilitate the tax fraud. The perpetrators paid back the entire amount they had stolen and paid prosecution costs.

Partnerships

HMRC works with partner organisations to tackle tax fraud and threats to the United Kingdom’s economic security. They include law enforcement agencies such as the National Crime Agency and National Economic Crime Centre, financial institutions, professional bodies, other government departments such as the Serious Fraud Office, regulatory bodies such as the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK intelligence community, and international tax and customs authorities. We also work with the devolved governments through joint enforcement efforts, legislative measures and sharing of expertise to ensure a coordinated approach to preventing and investigating tax fraud across the United Kingdom.

Using Automatic Exchange of Information to address offshore non-compliance

The UK also plays a leading role in international cooperation on tax transparency. In 2024 to 2025, we received Common Reporting Standard (CRS) information (relating to calendar year 2023) on over 10 million financial accounts from 106 jurisdictions. We analyse this CRS data, as well as other data and intelligence we hold, and compare it with customers’ data. This deters non-compliance, helps us support customers to get their tax right, and prompt those who may have got it wrong to correct any undeclared offshore tax, for example through the Worldwide Disclosure Facility (WDF). In 2024 to 2025, we sent 20,000 letters to customers who may not have declared all their foreign income and brought in £80.1 million in compliance yield through the WDF. We have secured £1 billion in compliance yield directly from international automatic exchange of information agreements since we first started receiving CRS data in 2016 to 2017.

Preventing phoenixism

HMRC works to tackle phoenixism, where the same business or directors trade successively through a series of companies which liquidate or dissolve leaving debts unpaid. We estimate that tax losses from phoenixism, in 2022 to 2023, accounted for about 22% of losses — which consists of a combination of write-offs and remissions [see the section on Preventing phoenixism for further detail on losses]. This updates the previously published estimate of 15% of losses, due to a spike in the number of insolvencies being deferred from earlier years.

Losses attributable to phoenixism are lagged and we expect the proportion of losses resulting from phoenixism to return to the previous range of 10% to 15% and emerging data indicates that this is likely to be the case for 2023 to 2024. We will publish an estimate of this when a more complete dataset for that year is available and we will continue to review and improve the methodology for estimating these losses, so estimates are subject to change.

In 2024 to 2025, HMRC, Companies House, and the Insolvency Service agreed a joint plan to tackle those using contrived insolvencies to evade tax and write off debts owed to others. This includes increasing the use of upfront payment demands (securities), doubling the amount of tax protected to £250 million by 2026 to 2027, making more directors personally liable for company taxes during 2025 to 2026, and increasing the number of Insolvency Service enforcement sanctions in phoenixism cases.

Collecting debt

It is important that all taxpayers pay their taxes when they are due. Additional investment in HMRC’s debt collection is enabling us to collect high levels of outstanding debt.

In 2024 to 2025, we resolved around £97 billion of debt. The vast majority of these resolutions are due to the debt being paid, with some also from losses. [You can read more later in this section].

Tax debt as a proportion of total tax receipts fell from 5.2% in 2023 to 2024, to 5.0% in 2024 to 2025 and we are determined to reduce it further. By the end of 2024 to 2025, the total debt balance had reduced to £44.0 billion, from £44.6 billion at the end of March 2024.

Figure 2: Debt balance and receivables

When customers owe taxes, duties, tax credits, penalties, charges, determinations or assessments to us, we call these amounts ‘receivables’ for accounting purposes (this becomes a debt if the amount owed becomes overdue and is not under appeal).

At 31 March 2025, gross receivables amounted to £70.3 billion, compared to £63.1 billion at 31 March 2024. This includes our total debt balance of £44.0 billion, of which 14% is in an instalment process. The total debt balance is made up of tax debt (£42.8 billion) and personal tax credit debt (£1.2 billion). Further information on each of these categories can be found in Notes to the Trust Statement in the section Our Accounts.

Being aware of our customers’ personal situations and providing extra support if needed is one of our Charter standards (read more on the HMRC Charter in Our accountability), so we take a supportive approach to customers with tax debts. The government has agreed extra investment for 2,400 HMRC debt management staff, which will allow us to contact more customers to understand their circumstances and take the appropriate action.

We support customers by offering flexible Time to Pay payment plans, which allow them to pay off their debt in affordable and sustainable instalments. These payment plans are available to businesses and individuals who are unable to pay their tax on time due to temporary financial difficulties.

To make it easier and faster to pay, our online Time to Pay service allows customers to set up payment plans without needing to call us. We continue to extend this service to more customers, and it now includes those with higher value debts or who need longer payment plans. In 2024 to 2025,122,000 payment plans were set up online.

Over 90% of Time to Pay payment plans are completed successfully and by the end of 2024 to 2025, we were supporting over 913,000 customers in this way, an increase of around 11,000 compared with the end of 2023 to 2024.

We take firm action against the small minority who ignore us or choose not to pay when they can afford to. For example, we are currently working on restarting the ‘direct recovery’ of tax debts owed by individuals and companies who have the ability to pay but choose not to.

Sometimes it’s not possible to collect debts that are owed to us. Where we can’t, it becomes a ‘tax loss’ — which consists of ‘write-offs’ and ‘remissions’. In 2024 to 2025, tax losses were £7.2 billion, of which £6.0 billion was from write-offs and the remainder remissions. We define remissions as money owed to us which we have decided not to pursue any further because it doesn’t represent value for money to do so. Write-offs is the term we use for money owed but for which there are no means of pursuing the debt, such as following a company liquidation or personal bankruptcy — this would include losses from phoenixism [read more in the section Preventing phoenixism]. Most insolvencies are voluntary with customers responsibly using insolvency procedures to resolve their financial affairs. Tax losses this year were £1.6 billion higher than in 2023 to 2024 as voluntary insolvencies stayed high and more debts met the criteria for being remitted. Tax losses as a proportion of new debts remains lower than the pre-pandemic average.

Our published strategic approach to debt sets out how we are working to minimise the volume and value of debt, by preventing tax debt, tailoring debt collection activity and making our processes more effective and efficient. In 2024 to 2025, we made progress in implementing this strategy — for example, we began using data purchased from credit reference agencies to tailor our approach when contacting customers about their debt.

At Autumn Budget 2024 and Spring Statement 2025, we secured a further £629 million of funding, which was a record amount of investment from the government in our debt collection activities. This will help us collect over £11 billion more debt by the end of 2029 to 2030. The funding was made up of £376 million to retain and recruit more debt management colleagues; £87 million to increase our debt management capacity by investing in our existing partnerships with private sector debt collection agencies; £154 million to modernise our debt management case system; and £12 million to acquire further credit reference data, so we can continue to better target our debt collection activities.

Read our more about the HMRC tax debt strategy - GOV.UK.

Improving day-to-day performance and the experience of our customers

This chapter reports on the progress we made in 2024 to 2025 on improving day-to-day performance and the experience of our customers, by building a more effective, agile and digitally focused HMRC.

“More and more customers are using our always-available online services. Last year, around three quarters of all interactions with customers were through our digital services. Customers who use our online services like them — they consistently have a customer satisfaction rating above 80%.

By expanding and improving our online services, as well as highlighting them through targeted communications campaigns, we’re helping more customers interact with us digitally. We’re also helping people by improving our guidance.

We recognise some customers are unable to use digital services and some have complex queries so our helplines and post remain important channels. Improvements on helpline and post performance mean customers are getting a better service, but we have more to do and we are determined to improve further.”

Myrtle Lloyd
Chief Customer Officer and Director General, Customer Services

A digital-first organisation

People and businesses rightly expect to be able to interact with us in a way that is as simple and convenient as possible, whether that’s to meet their own or their clients’ tax obligations, claim benefits or conduct trade at the border. We’re doing everything we can to improve the experience for anyone who needs to interact with HMRC, while delivering value for money to taxpayers.

That’s why we’re continuing to evolve into a more modern, digital-first organisation. We’re investing in our technology, to go further in modernising the tax and customs system and help us become more productive, agile and efficient.

Figure 3: Customer interactions through automated or digital self-serve channels (%) (note)

Our digital-first customer service strategy aims to enable as many customers as possible to self-serve online. We made good progress on implementing this strategy in 2024 to 2025, expanding and enhancing our digital services and driving up their usage. In 2024 to 2025, 76.2% of our customer interactions were made through automated or digital self-serve channels, building on the upward trend in recent years and towards our aim of 90% by 2029 to 2030.

Note: Over the course of 2024 to 2025 we have worked to improve the quality of the data included within the metric. This change in methodology means that it now captures more digital interactions than previously included, resulting in an increase of 2 to 5 percentage points in each year.

Delivering a better online customer experience

Customer feedback shows that people and businesses who self-serve online via GOV.UK or the HMRC app appreciate being able to get what they need quickly and easily at a time and place that suits them. Online self-service also frees up more of our advisers to help people who need extra support, like those who are particularly vulnerable or who cannot access online services, and those who have more complex queries.

In 2024 to 2025, 97.3% of Self Assessment returns were completed online, compared to 97.0% last year. Our business and personal tax accounts, and the HMRC app, were accessed 302 million times. Customers rate our app highly — with a current rating of 4.8 out of 5 on the Apple App store, 4.6 out of 5 on the Google Play store — and satisfaction with our other digital services is consistently over 80% (see figure 5). The majority of customers also find our digital services easy to use (see figure 4).

Here is what some customers have said about the HMRC app:

• “Brilliant app (5-star rating): This year is the first time I completed the self assessment myself instead of using an accountant. I have found the information on the HMRC app extremely useful, and really helped me to understand how my tax payments were calculated in previous years. The extra bonus was the easiness in processing my tax payment through the HMRC app. Very happy indeed!”
• “Great App (5-star rating): I’m an ‘older’ user so don’t like complicated stuff but this app has been so easy for me to use. I would urge everyone to download it. I really feel like I’m in control and the information I need is at my fingertips.”
• “Quick and easy (5-star rating): I just paid my tax in the app and it couldn’t have been any quicker or easier. Nicely integrated into my banking app and it was all done in about two minutes. I was expecting a much more arduous process. Thank you.”

We now have more than 5.9 million users of the HMRC app and the number continues to rise. We’re promoting the app and other online services with innovative, targeted marketing campaigns, and breaking down barriers to their use.

Customers can now use the HMRC app to view their PAYE tax code, claim a tax refund if they’re owed one, pay Self Assessment liabilities, or claim and manage Child Benefit, as well as download their National Insurance number to an Apple or Google wallet.

The app is also a platform for customers to manage their tax payments, with over £1 billion of Self Assessment and Simple Assessment paid in this way during 2024 to 2025. New users are increasingly proactive in using the app to manage their financial responsibilities, signalling a shift towards digital engagement in personal finance management. To continue developing the app, we’ve developed new push notifications for mobile users. HMRC app users will receive a notification on their mobile phone to provide reassurance that we’ve received their claim to Child Benefit, reducing the need for them to call to check on progress. We will expand use of these features across different taxes and customer groups throughout 2025.

Simplifying access to our online services

Making it easier for customers to access our online services is important too and to that end, GOV.UK One Login enables people to access multiple government online services via a single sign-in and identity checking service. HMRC will begin onboarding to GOV.UK One Login in 2025, starting with customers who are new to HMRC online services and do not already have an individual Government Gateway account.

In March 2025 we began trialling Voice Biometrics, which involves collecting customers’ voice recordings, so they can be used as their passwords — making it quicker and easier for them to get through the authentication process when they need to contact us.

Improving our guidance

Enhancing our published guidance is also an important part of delivering a better customer experience, and helps reduce the need for customers to contact us directly for common or straightforward issues.

In 2024 to 2025, we significantly enhanced our online Self Assessment services to address 2 major drivers of phone calls: people asking how to claim tax refunds and people wanting to check the progress of existing claims.

Since making our Self Assessment guidance clearer and promoting self-service tools to enable the tracking of claims, we’ve seen over 60,000 more customers use our guidance without the need to contact us.

Key digital service improvements in 2024 to 2025

Enhanced digital services for PAYE customers

We’re making it easier to check and update incomes, allowances, reliefs, and expenses. These services enable customers to understand what information we hold and make changes to ensure they are paying the right tax on their salary or pension

The first improvements were released in January 2025 to a limited number of customers to test these changes with regular enhancements planned throughout the year. Future releases will simplify the process for PAYE customers to claim expenses, including the ability to upload supporting documents to verify their claims. This will build on the 6.3 million customers who had expenses in their tax codes for 2024 to 2025.

New features in the digital Child Benefit service which was launched in May 2023

Previously, 75% of claims were received by post but in 2024 to 2025, 83% of new claims were made online. In 2024, we added further security features to prevent fraud and gave customers the option to digitally opt in or out of the High-Income Child Benefit Charge.

We began to upgrade online services for customers telling us they no longer need to file a Self Assessment return

Pre-populated information and communications have improved the online process and reduced the need for calls and manual processing by advisers. We will expand these improvements to help customers registering for Self Assessment and make the process for appealing penalties easier.

[You can read more in the Modernising how businesses and individuals interact with us section.]

Figure 4: Customer experience: Net Easy for digital, webchat and telephony contact

This metric is based on a survey offered to customers after every telephone, webchat and digital interaction asking the question: ‘How easy was it to deal with us today?’. The score represents the total of positive responses minus the total of negative responses, to achieve a net score. Our overall score of +62.2 was below our service standard of +70, with our digital services rated as the easiest route to deal with us.

Figure 5: Customer satisfaction for digital, webchat and telephony contact

Another key measure of our customer experience is customer satisfaction, which was 79.7% in 2024 to 2025, close to our target of 80%. When we break this down further to the satisfaction levels on each of our different channels — phone, webchat and digital — we can see that the increasing number of customers using our online services to manage their tax affairs are generally very satisfied with them.

Improving service levels and the customer experience

While a digital self-serve experience remains our ambition for the majority of our customers, we recognise that this is not always the best option for everyone. Improving customer service performance across our telephone and post services remains a key priority for HMRC, and we made strong progress on this during 2024 to 2025 (this is explained in the box below). In 2024 to 2025, 71.5% of callers who wanted to speak to one of our advisers were able to do so, which was an increase from 66.4% the previous year, but short of our 85% target (see figure 6). Our average call wait time in 2024 to 2025 was 18 minutes and 38 seconds, compared with 23 minutes and 14 seconds in 2023 to 2024.

In 2024 to 2025, we also improved the proportion of customer correspondence that we turned around within 15 working days to 76.9%, from 76.3% in 2023 to 2024, against a service standard of 80% (see figure 7). Our correspondence on hand reduced through the year from 2.57 million items in April 2024 to 2.29 million in March 2025. Acting promptly on post queries is really important, as it reduces the need for customers to contact us to ask for a progress update.

The funding we have secured for 2025 to 2026 means that we expect to see improved and more consistent performance throughout the year.

Figure 6: Telephony adviser attempts handled and call volumes

Telephony Adviser Attempts Handled percentage (AAH) measures the proportion of callers who got through to an adviser after hearing the automated messages and choosing to speak to an adviser (adviser attempts). Our performance in 2024 to 2025 was 71.5%, lower than our service standard of 85%, but an improvement on 2023 to 2024 (66.4%).

Telephony performance through the year

Our telephony performance improved from where it was at the beginning of 2024 to 2025. In the first half of the year our performance remained below the service standard of 85%, with 64.7% of callers who queued for an adviser having their call answered. In quarter 3 we met our target, with 85.1% of callers who wanted to speak to an adviser being able to do so.

However, demand is typically higher in January, February and March due to the annual tax cycle, and although we anticipate and plan for this, we experienced more calls on some of our telephony lines than expected, which impacted performance in those months. Performance improved in March 2025, with 80.2% of callers who wanted to speak to an adviser doing so.

The progress we made this year was largely due to our ongoing efforts to reduce demand for traditional contact channels like post and telephone, improvements to our digital services and the deployment of additional customer service advisers.

Figure 7: Percentage of customer correspondence responded to within 15 and 40 working days of receipt

We improved the proportion of customer correspondence that we responded to within 15 working days from 76.3% in 2023 to 2024 to 76.9% in 2024 to 2025, although this is still below our 80% service standard. Similarly, we responded to 88.2% of customer correspondence within 40 days, a slight reduction on our 2023 to 2024 levels, and below our service standard of 95%.

Improving the experience for tax advisers

We recognise that tax advisers such as accountants and bookkeepers play a substantial role in maintaining a healthy tax system, performing a range of functions on behalf of taxpayers and helping their clients to pay the right amount of tax at the right time. It is therefore important that we provide them with the services they need — both analogue and digital — to support their clients effectively.

At Autumn Budget 2024, the government announced a £36 million investment to modernise HMRC’s tax adviser registration services. This investment will help reduce delays in registration, simplify and secure the process for accessing services, and set the foundation for future improvements.

This year we have strengthened the security and foundations of our Agent Services Account and the enhancements we’ve delivered have enabled:

• advisers to more efficiently self-serve by having the ability to update their contact and anti-money laundering details
• the decommissioning of the old VAT authorisation route via the Online Agents Authorisation service
• automated digital checks of advisers on sign-in to the Agent Services Account
• reductions in print and postal costs

By the end of 2024 to 2025, a total of 6,922 advisers had updated their details and a total of 2,683 had updated their anti-money laundering supervision status.

We also improved digital transactional services, allowing advisers to manage their clients’ affairs more effectively; and, since April 2025, customers have been able to authorise multiple advisers to assist with their income tax obligations, which supports MTD for Income Tax.

We developed a new service to provide an escalation route for advisers with Self Assessment and PAYE queries over 4 weeks old. Launched in March 2025, this new service built on the changes announced in October 2024, which included a dedicated option for repayment progress chasing on our agents’ helpline, and enhanced agent webchat.

While we are making progress, we recognise there is more to do to provide tax advisers with the services they need, and we remain committed to working with them and their representative bodies to continue improving our services.

Meeting our Charter standards

Our Charter sits at the heart of what we do, setting out the standards of service and behaviours that customers should always expect from us. It explains how we aim to get things right, make things easy for customers and be fair, responsive and aware of their personal situations. The Charter also recognises that customers may want someone else to represent them and provides reassurance that we will always keep their data secure.

Delivering to our Charter standards is essential to us ensuring a good customer experience. While we recognise there is more work to do to truly embed these standards across the department, we are committed to upholding them to earn and maintain public trust (see figure 8 below). [Read the report on how we performed against the HMRC Charter in 2024 to 2025 in the HMRC Charter section.]

Figure 8: Trust in HMRC (note)

Public trust in the tax and customs system is crucial in order for us to do our job effectively. The graph below shows how small, mid-sized and large businesses, individuals and agents rated us when asked whether HMRC is an organisation they trust.

We introduced this question into our customer surveys in different years. Individuals’ rating of trust in HMRC has decreased since 2022 however we have seen positive improvements in trust amongst small and mid-sized businesses, and agents, in 2024.

We are focusing on improving day to day performance and the customer experience, whilst taking into account the individual circumstances of our customers, to build and earn trust.

Note: 2023 mid-sized score has been revised to exclude ‘not applicable’ answers and therefore differs to the previously published figure.

Being transparent about our performance

We aim to increase transparency and build public trust by publishing data and information on how we are performing, such as our monthly and quarterly performance data published on GOV.UK. We also share findings from our external research programme, our evaluations and a range of official and national statistics.

In 2024 to 2025, we published 17 research reports covering issues such as customers’ experience of dealing with HMRC and evaluations of policy changes. Some of the results of our customer surveys, relating to specific Charter standards, are shown below.

How do customers rate their experience with us?

HMRC Charter standard: making things easy

Ease of dealing with tax issues:

Customer group	2023	2024
Individuals	52% positive (note 2)	44% positive
Small business	70% positive (note 1)	73% positive
Agents	38% positive (note 1)	62% positive

Overall experience of dealing with HMRC over the last 12 months:

Customer group	2023	2024
Individuals	58% positive	52% positive
Small business	70% positive	68% positive
Agents	37% positive	33% positive

Ease of finding information from HMRC:

Customer group	2023	2024
Individuals	51% positive (note 1)	48% positive
Small business	58% positive (note 1)	58% positive
Agents	45% positive (note 1)	45% positive

Notes:

1. Question wording amended in 2024 and comparisons should be made with caution. See published report for further details.
2. Question was asked to all those surveyed in 2024, but only to a subset within 2023. Comparisons should be made with caution. See published report for further details.

HMRC Charter standard: getting things right and treating you fairly

Confidence in the way HMRC are doing their job:

Customer group	2023	2024
Individuals	41% positive	40% positive
Small business	52% positive	63% positive
Agents	27% positive	37% positive

HMRC are professional:

Customer group	2023	2024
Individuals	54% positive	49% positive
Small business	84% positive	80% positive
Agents	63% positive	57% positive

HMRC treated my business fairly:

Customer group	2023	2024
Small business	80% positive	76% positive

Read our customer surveys on GOV.UK.

Read quarterly performance updates on GOV.UK.
Read our annual statistics publication plan on GOV.UK.
Read our research reports on GOV.UK.

Improving support for customers who need extra help

As set out in the HMRC Charter, we are committed to being aware of customers’ wider personal situations and will provide extra support if customers need it. We appreciate that dealing with tax, financial hardship, or debt can be stressful.

All HMRC advisers are given training and guidance on how to identify customers who need extra help and how to either provide tailored support themselves or refer the customer to HMRC’s specialist extra support provision. We increased the size of our extra support team by 28% over 2024 to 2025.

HMRC also provides specific adjustments for customers who need alternative communication methods (translation, Braille, or large print for example), who may need a third party to act on their behalf, or who may need extra time or help filling in forms. In 2024 to 2025, our dedicated Customer Service Extra Support team helped over 150,000 of our customers in vulnerable circumstances to get what they need from us. In addition, our Customer Compliance Extra Support team also provided specialist support for almost 4,000 customers going through a compliance check.

HMRC also directly funds 12 Voluntary and Community Sector organisations, with £5.5 million invested over 2024 to 2027, to help customers make claims and understand and comply with their tax obligations, offer support if a customer cannot use HMRC digital services, or give specialist support if a customer has disabilities, language barriers, or complex enquiries. During 2024 to 2025, about 40,000 customers were supported by HMRC funded Voluntary and Community Sector organisations.

HMRC has also invested in training delivered by the Samaritans that equips advisers and caseworkers with the skills and confidence to have supportive conversations with vulnerable people and help them to build confidence in supporting those customers effectively via correspondence.

We have also introduced a new bereavement service to support customers during difficult times, ensuring they have access to a streamlined, once-and-done approach when we identify this need. In 2024 to 2025, this service assisted over 3,000 individuals. In 2025 to 2026 we are introducing a dedicated helpline to enable customers to reach the service directly.

Read our principles of support for customers who need extra help on GOV.UK.

Improving our complaints process

We want to get things right for customers first time, in line with our Charter standards, but when this doesn’t happen, we have a straightforward and accessible complaints process. This year we enhanced our service by enabling tax advisers to complain via an online form. We automated our SMS text message service to update customers on the progress of their complaint. We’re also piloting a webchat service for complaints.

Our operational teams are focused on doing more to resolve customer issues at the first point of contact to prevent complaints escalating. In 2024 to 2025, new complaints increased by 1.5% compared to the previous year, with our average response time decreasing to 27 days, from 36 days.

We’re working continuously to improve our handling of complaints. For example, we proactively contacted customers to resolve older complaint cases and identify any new vulnerabilities. We explored how to better support customers with historical tax credit debt and responded quickly when an HMRC failure impacted customer payments to ensure no one suffered financially as a result.

We’re trialling new ways of handling complaints, testing a single-tier complaints process within our compliance function. We work closely with the Adjudicator’s Office, strengthening the governance around our complaints handling and responding to their independent feedback and we’ve forged closer working relationships with other government departments to improve the experience our customers receive. We value the insight we receive from the Adjudicator, which this year led to us collaborating to improve our handling of repayments.

Reforming and modernising Tax and Customs administration

This chapter looks at how we’re making the most of new and exciting advancements in technology to modernise HMRC and drive changes to make us more productive, agile and efficient in delivering our core purpose, closing the tax gap and improving the customer experience.

“In 2024 to 2025, we continued to transform our services and ways of working to meet new and evolving challenges.

We’ve invested in more resilient IT systems and developed our digital services; testing and using artificial intelligence solutions to further improve HMRC services.

We’ve also taken time to invest in our people and identify the skills we’ll need to run the digital tax service of the future, putting in place plans to further reform and modernise the UK tax and customs system.”

James Mitton
Director General, Enterprise Transformation group

Why we are modernising and reforming

The UK’s tax and customs system is changing. The number of customers with increasingly complex tax affairs is growing and third-party intermediaries are playing an increasingly important role in the tax system.

It is vital that the tax and customs system keeps pace with evolving customer expectations. Our ambition is to become a digital-first organisation where most customers who need to interact with HMRC will do so through digital self-serve. Customers also expect their data to be stored safely and securely, and for our systems to be joined up.

That’s why reform and modernisation are fundamental to improving HMRC’s day-to-day performance and the customer experience, and to closing the tax gap.

Our transformation plans

We are committed to reforming and modernising tax and customs administration. This includes delivering a range of digital services that will improve customer experience. For example, in 2025 to 2026, we will:

• improve the digital Self Assessment registration service and make the process simpler for customers who want to tell us they no longer need to file a Self Assessment return
• add new digital self-serve options into the PAYE digital service enabling customers to notify HMRC of income changes, check what allowances or deductions they are receiving and ensure they are paying the correct tax
• introduce digital tracking services, for example, in 2025 to 2026 we plan to deliver the technology so that Child Benefit customers will be able to track their claims and view their payments in real time

Modernising how businesses and individuals interact with us

Businesses are increasingly using digital tools to improve cash flow, track invoicing, communicate with customers, and manage in a cashless society. And they are using software, provided either through their banks or purchased separately, to run their businesses.

Through MTD we have stimulated the tax software market, with 23 new products being launched to help integrate the running of a business with the effective management of their tax affairs.

MTD encourages businesses and landlords to keep accurate digital records — saving them time and helping to reduce the number of errors being made — and is a key part of modernising how business and individuals interact with HMRC.

We’ve already delivered MTD for VAT, processing to date more than 30 million VAT returns via this route.

MTD for VAT is currently predicted to deliver cumulative tax revenue of over £4 billion from 2019 to 2020 up to the end of 2029 to 2030 by reducing taxpayer errors, based on a methodology that has been certified by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

In February 2025 we published our final evaluation, which found that most businesses reported at least one benefit of MTD for VAT, including greater confidence in managing their tax affairs and time saved, which we estimate to be 26 to 40 hours per year on average for each business using fully functional software. We estimate the financial value of this time to be between £603 million and £915 million.

At Autumn Budget 2024, the government reaffirmed the timetable for rolling out MTD for Income Tax to sole traders and landlords with income over £50,000 from April 2026 and over £30,000 from April 2027. Reporting business income and expenses through MTD for Income Tax will reduce the opportunity for error and help sole traders and landlords pay the right amount of tax. We also expect it to help with business planning and support business productivity.

Read the Making Tax Digital for VAT evaluation on GOV.UK.

At Spring Statement 2025, the government announced its intention to expand MTD for Income Tax to those with a turnover above £20,000 from April 2028 and confirmed:

• improvements to MTD’s design, which boost the innovative potential of commercial software, requiring customers to complete the entirety of their Self Assessment obligations in MTD-compatible software
• a number of deferrals and exemptions, including for small groups of customers who may have faced disproportionate barriers to operating MTD

This announcement provides stakeholders with certainty on key policy and design issues, and we will continue to engage with them to address any questions and provide further assurance.

In the last two years we have taken extensive action to assure the delivery of MTD for Income Tax, working with stakeholders, customers and the software industry to improve the design of the service. In 2024 to 2025, we recruited volunteers to begin testing our digital services for MTD for Income Tax. This has enabled us to drive forward improvements and prepare for public testing. We’ve also engaged software providers to actively participate in our testing service. We are progressing activities to support our customers and tax advisers to be ready for the service to go live in April 2026.

Next steps towards our digital future

At Autumn Budget 2024, the government announced further investment to support our modernisation and improve the customer experience. The design work is underway for a number of these enhancements and we will report progress on delivering them in future years. The changes include:

• digitalising Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs) to create a modern, digital reporting system for HMRC and its customers. The aim is to close the ISA tax gap by helping to identify and address errors closer to real time. We’re currently designing digital ISA reporting, registration and penalties
• pre-populating Self Assessment tax returns with Child Benefit data for the purposes of the High-Income Child Benefit Charge. This will help customers by ensuring the charge is accurately calculated and reported
• digitalising the Inheritance Tax service from 2027 to 2028, to provide a more modern system, which makes it quicker and easier to file returns and pay the tax due
• modernising voluntary Self Assessment pre-payment via the HMRC app. This will allow Income Tax Self Assessment taxpayers to make voluntary advance payments in instalments

[Read about upcoming policy changes that will help us to close the tax gap in the Addressing non-compliance section. Find more information about how we have improved our online offering for customers in 2024 to 2025 in the Improving day-to-day performance and the experience of our customers section.]

How we are improving our data and using new, innovative technology

Our customers should not have to give us the same information multiple times across multiple channels. As our systems and data have built up over several decades, however, one of the challenges for us has been ensuring that we have a full view of each customer’s record when we interact with them.

Our Unique Customer Record programme is tackling this and has brought together over 135 million individual customer records into our new Central Customer Registry (CCR). For the first time, we can view customer data across 5 different taxes.

In bringing those records together we can now see what themes we have across different taxes and crucially, where the gaps are in the data that can lead to issues. This will save customers from having to contact us because of incorrect or missing names, addresses or other basic customer details, helping to reduce the half a million calls to our phone lines each year for these reasons.

The CCR data has now been connected to HMRCs customer call handling system, so that our telephony advisers can see it when handling customer calls. This allows our advisers to correct data quality issues in real time or refer them to a specialist team for further action, helping to improve our customer data and reduce the costs to customers of dealing with the tax system.

We have also started to use data purchased from credit reference agencies to improve the accuracy of how we categorise our customers to better identify their risks and needs. This enabled us to tailor our approach when contacting around 1.5 million Self Assessment customers about their payments on account.

Exploiting AI and advanced technologies

There is huge potential for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other developing technologies to be used to improve how organisations operate and give customers a better experience. AI is the use of technology to create systems capable of performing tasks commonly thought to require human intelligence and we’ve been using ‘traditional’ AI for decades at HMRC. More recently we’ve also started making use of generative AI (GenAI), which is a subset of AI that can generate new information, such as text or images.

To test this new technology, we’re focusing on safer, internal uses of AI that drive better customer experience, internal productivity and improve our operations. This year we have:

• explored call summarisation, to support telephony advisers, testing the ability to reduce the time spent on customer call wrap-up through real-time call summaries, and better categorising calls
• supported a cross-government AI chatbot pilot aiming to make it easier to access guidance on GOV.UK
• enhanced compliance targeting, debt prediction, and fraud detection through advanced AI analytics tools
• played a key role in international approaches to the use of AI, by pulling together examples of AI use from Tax Authorities and contributing to the Trustworthy AI Framework which will be tested in 2025
• built an internal generative AI landing zone to help us safely exploit AI, whether internally or for customer-facing services

There is a clear ambition across government to improve how we deliver services, by exploiting technology to solve problems and enhance the customer experience. We are exploring how we can engage differently with the market, for example, to innovate in an agile way with a range of suppliers — including running a new ‘data science competition’ on tax compliance, from July 2025.

We also recognise the importance of reassuring customers and the wider public about how we’re using AI. We have an AI Ethics Working Group, which is responsible for establishing mandatory processes, challenging projects, and reporting on progress. We have sought additional assurance of our approach to AI from our Professional Standards Committee, whose members include ethics experts and non-executives.

Where we use AI in a way that could impact customer outcomes, we always ensure that the result is explainable, that there’s a human in the loop, and that it complies with our data protection, security, and AI ethical standards. We will continue to build on our existing AI framework and align with and contribute to cross-government best practice and guidance.

How we’re strengthening our IT resilience

At HMRC we run a vast 24/7 operation and have one of the largest and most complex IT estates in the UK. Continually modernising and updating our infrastructure, and ensuring it remains fit for purpose, is essential to meeting the evolving needs of customers and keeping their data secure.

“HMRC will deliver more of what our customers need through quick and straightforward digital channels, improving their experience and making it easier to get their tax right, first time. To help us do this we’re modernising our systems, streamlining our IT governance, and working in more agile ways to deliver the outcomes HMRC needs sooner.

We’ve already moved many of our services to cloud hosting and we remain fully committed to exiting our legacy data centres as we build a modern IT estate. We’ll have fewer technologies providing our IT platforms, so that we can scale them up more easily and cost-efficiently.

Those platforms will enable us to build the IT products our customers and colleagues need, in ways that enable us to change services much faster in future. They will be well-supported and properly governed, with our IT experts working to industry best practice and standards.”

Daljit Rehal
Chief Digital and Information Officer

Protecting customer data

It’s crucial that our data use is transparent, proportionate and follows data protection laws. We have continued to review and remediate existing systems to ensure they are fully compliant with General Data Protection Regulations. By the end of March 2025, we reviewed 82 HMRC systems or warehouses, deleting around 150 billion rows of data.

We liaise regularly with the Information Commissioners Office on matters relating to data protection. Since March 2023, we have seen an increase in the volume of Subject Access Requests (SARs), where customers can request copies of their personal information held by HMRC. This has largely been driven by increases in requests made by third parties on behalf of data subjects. In 2024 to 2025, volumes began to reduce but continued to remain high. We have significantly increased the resource for responding to SARs, but we have not been able to respond to all requests on time.

As we increasingly become a digital-first organisation, continuing to invest in the safety and security of our systems is more important than ever. That’s why we’ve made keeping customers’ data secure an integral part of the HMRC Charter. We know our customers remain at risk from criminals pretending to be HMRC and launching phishing scams at scale by email, text and phone.

We have been responding to an evolving series of sophisticated and complex attempts, by organised criminal groups, to manipulate the PAYE system by impersonating genuine customers to extract fraudulent repayments from HMRC. Revenue losses from this incident are estimated, to date, to be £48.8 million. We acted promptly to protect taxpayers’ accounts, and no customers have experienced, or will experience, any financial loss in respect of their tax affairs as a result of this incident. More broadly, in 2024 to 2025, we prevented revenue loss of £2 billion through enhanced repayments and identity verification controls.

To further strengthen HMRC’s resilience to identity-related fraud, we are developing a Fraud Prevention Centre (FPC), which is a multi-functional team led by HMRC’s Security department, focusing on the continued protection, detection and response to identity-related security issues.

We work hard to protect the tax system, for example pioneering the use in government of technical controls to stop our helpline numbers being spoofed, so that criminals can no longer make it appear that they are calling from those HMRC numbers. Technical controls, together with HMRC’s public advice on GOV.UK and elsewhere, have helped move the department from being the third-most-abused brand globally in 2015 to well outside of the top 100 now.

But we will not be complacent. We have a dedicated team working on cyber and phone crime around the clock, to protect the public and the integrity of the tax system. HMRC’s Cyber Security Operations identify and close down scams every day. Working with the Office of Communications, we report suspicious telephone numbers to telecommunication providers for removal.

In 2024 to 2025, we responded to and intervened in 58,237 vishing (voice phishing) scams, which attempt to trick victims into giving up sensitive information over the phone. We’ve enhanced our anti-phishing tools to get even better at managing intelligence from multiple sources and further strengthen our response to criminals who pretend to be from HMRC. In 2024 to 2025, we took down 27,493 phishing websites, an increase on the total of 26,934 for 2023 to 2024.

We also identified 813 HMRC-branded infringements on social media sites by unauthorised use of HMRC’s name or branding, an increase from 671 in 2023 to 2024. We took corrective action to protect the public from being deceived into providing personal information to criminals masquerading as HMRC. We attribute this increase to our continual expansion of our proactive monitoring capabilities and the relationships built with social media providers.

Find out how to report phishing scams to HMRC on GOV.UK.

Modernising our systems

Modernising our systems will also improve their resilience and robustness, enabling us to better meet the needs of customers, collect the correct tax and duties payable and tackle non-compliance. We’re focused on keeping our core operating systems up to date, while building the foundations for more expansive use of new technologies and exploiting the benefits of AI and other automation and intelligent systems. Our plans include:

• consolidating data distributed across legacy data warehouses into a cloud-based data system, which will support our generative AI activities and advanced analytics for compliance. This supports our compliance activity, as part of our work to close the tax gap
• accelerating the transformation of our infrastructure to enable better access and sharing of data, ensuring our networks and data are secure and that HMRC is protected from a multitude of ever larger and more sophisticated cyber-attacks, as a priority
• continuing to drive our ongoing programme of service modernisation, including a focus on decommissioning services that are no longer well used, as operational needs have evolved, removing reliance on legacy systems

Building a high-performing organisation, with a skilled and engaged workforce

“Building an engaged, empowered, and inclusive workforce is essential to achieving our aims, and I’m proud to be part of such a dedicated team here at HMRC.

I’ve only been here a short time but have already seen how the vision of becoming a trusted, modern tax and customs department is brought to life through our commitment to delivering against our people priorities.

Our people strategy ensures we have the right tools to succeed, and continuing to invest in our people can only help us continue the great work we’ve been doing across the department, from reforming and modernising how we do things, through to delivering an improved experience for our customers.”

Helen Pickles
Chief People Officer

Our overarching people strategy

To effectively close the tax gap, improve our day-to-day performance and modernise and reform the tax system, we need an engaged, empowered, and inclusive workforce.

This year we developed HMRC’s overarching People Strategy which sets out the 5 areas where we are focusing our efforts:

• learning, skills and capability
• change agility and leadership
• employee experience
• building a high-performing digital organisation
• resourcing and recruitment

Learning, skills and capability

Providing customers with accurate, consistent, and clear information, along with the right level of expertise are some of the standards within the HMRC Charter that customers expect from us. We’re prioritising building skills across our workforce and creating a continuous learning culture, to ensure we have capable and professional colleagues to deliver for our customers. Some of the ways we achieve this are through offering apprenticeships, online learning modules and accelerated development programmes.

In 2024 to 2025, we established the foundations for our Tax, Customs and Compliance Academy which launched in April 2025. This will support colleagues to build their capability in tax, customs, compliance and customer service and is at the heart of our commitment to power professional development and excellence, and to meet professional standards consistently in everything we do.

This year, we have significantly expanded our Digital Academy, integrating digital, data, and technology learning to enhance confidence, competence, and technical expertise across our workforce. In 2024 to 2025, we had over 237,000 visits to the HMRC Digital Academy site with over 80,000 courses completed, with 7,225 colleagues completing AI learning modules. These efforts are instrumental in advancing employees’ digital skills and contributing to the modernisation of HMRC. We’re also enhancing our technical professionalism through our growing relationship with The Chartered Institute for IT, for example by aligning our practices with their standards and actively engaging in their professional development programmes. This will help us deliver high-quality, future-ready solutions in line with best practices in the tech industry.

We have implemented a Technical Fluency Learning Pathway across HMRC, enabling colleagues to adapt to new tools and evolving work practices. This helps teams more confidently utilise the latest technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, and cloud and digital workplace tools including Microsoft 365.

To achieve our goal of enhancing in-house technical capabilities, we have developed a series of learning hubs, including the data hub, digital sustainability hub, digital leaders hub, and Microsoft 365 hub. These are ‘one-stop-shops’ to enhance specific capabilities. Additionally, we have introduced the Government Digital and Data Profession Associate Membership Scheme and the Enterprise Talent Scheme. These programmes enable colleagues to acquire in-demand technical skills, offering career development opportunities and ensuring HMRC’s technical capabilities are future-proof.

Award winning professions

Our professions ensure we develop specialist skills and knowledge in people, set standards and define career pathways. Below are some of the external nominations, awards and accreditations for our professions in 2024 to 2025:

• our Project Delivery Professional Excellence Team won the Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s Advancing the Profession award — this recognises teams that have enabled the profession to evolve and develop, create exciting opportunities for those in the profession, and raise the quality of our project outcomes
• our Government Digital and Data Profession has been widely recognised winning Computing Security, Real IT and Woman in Technology awards, whilst our Head of Profession (the Chief Digital and Information Officer) was ranked sixth in the UKTech50 list of most influential figures in UK IT
• our Operational Delivery Professionals received multiple awards and nominations, including the Modern Civil Service award, won by the Child Benefit Modernisation Team
• our Legal Profession has achieved Lexcel accreditation for its Litigation department, which is the Law Society’s quality mark for demonstrating excellence in client care, compliance and practice management

Change agility and leadership

Leadership development is a high priority for us so we can lead our people through organisational change to become more effective. Our bespoke Leadership Within the Enterprise programme supports senior leaders to develop their leadership skills, through modules on systems, strategic thinking and communicating with impact and influence. Since its launch, around 25% of our Senior Civil Service have participated in the programme.

Now in its fourth year, our Management Development Programme has helped to build management capability across HMRC and to develop skills for over 6,000 of our managers. Participants have reported a range of benefits including improved performance and productivity, improved team and colleague wellbeing and more effective remote management.

We are expanding our Manager Investment Programme, which launched in June 2022, to new managers in our Customer Service function. This year 161 participants completed the programme across 13 cohorts. We are now working to integrate this into our overall leadership and management offer across the department for all new managers and have planned cohorts for 2025 to 2026, including offering the programme to other parts of HMRC.

Employee experience

We remain committed to creating an inclusive, respectful and representative workplace for our colleagues. This supports us to attract and retain diverse talent from across all communities as a means of delivering better outcomes for the citizens we serve.

We are also committed to providing an attractive employment offer and have made our working arrangements and terms and conditions simpler, fairer and more consistent. This supports our ongoing efforts to improve how it feels to work in HMRC. Where roles allow, colleagues have the flexibility to work from home for part of their week, following the principles set out in our Balancing Home and Office Working policy.

We continue to develop our reward and pay strategy to attract the diverse and appropriately skilled workforce that we need. We have built on the investment made over the previous 3 years through our Pay and Contract reforms by paying an average award of 5% in 2024 to 2025 in line with the Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance.

Our regional centres provide our employees with modern, inclusive workspaces that support smarter working and innovation, and reflect our commitment to having a workforce that represents the communities we serve around the UK.

We expect to move into our new Newcastle Regional Centre location at Pilgrim’s Quarter in 2027 and have announced that our new Portsmouth Regional Centre will be located at No.1 The Goodsyard, which we expect to be ready in late 2027.

Supporting colleague wellbeing

We recognise the importance of a culture that values diversity and supports the wellbeing of our people, and we aim to create an environment where everyone can work at their best and deliver effectively for our customers. In 2024 to 2025 we:

• expanded the services available through our employee assistance programme, which now includes career coaching session for colleagues, guided computerised cognitive behavioural therapy, where clinically recommended, and an enhanced health check
• recruited and trained an additional 82 Mental Health Advocates, bringing our total to 242, and conducting refresher training for 55 existing Advocates
• published new guidance on preventing and tackling sexual harassment in the workplace to incorporate Workers Protection Act legislative changes
• continued to make progress against our equality objectives, including taking targeted action to address unacceptable behaviour and reinforcing our position on not tolerating any form of bullying, harassment and discrimination
• refreshed our Workplace Adjustments policy to simplify processes for disabled colleagues and their managers, so that adjustments can be obtained as swiftly as possible, ensuring they are supported to perform to the best of their ability

Building a high-performing digital organisation

In 2024 to 2025, we continued to put in place new IT contracts that give colleagues better access to the latest technology and increase the long-term reliability and security of our IT infrastructure.

We have also established ‘model offices’ to implement and evaluate new technology and innovative approaches to service delivery. For example, the PAYE model office team in Manchester has been involved in designing an enhanced digital service for PAYE customers and in 2024 to 2025, the model office supported 34 initiatives. This included external outreach to support over 110,000 PAYE schemes, reaching over 4.5 million employees, aimed at reducing tax reporting errors. The team of frontline colleagues interacts with customers daily and provides insights and expertise to redesign operational processes, while ensuring digital services meet customer needs through real-time feedback.

Resourcing and recruitment

We have modernised recruitment by introducing innovative Artificial Intelligence products that simplify and improve the vacancy holder experience and reduce the time spent by hiring managers in the recruitment process. For example, we have built and introduced ‘Skill Scribe’ for hiring managers to make it easier to write adverts, interview questions and provide outreach support. We’ve also developed a regional insights tool that gives real time location information to aid with labour market analysis.

To allow large numbers of candidates to be reviewed more quickly, we improved processes and designed and delivered training sessions which will support our large-scale recruitment campaigns. We also embedded new policy guidance, first introduced in March 2024, to help hiring managers and colleagues apply reasonable adjustments at interview, helping to maximise the potential of everyone who applies for a role.

Figure 9: Employee Engagement Index and fairness and respect scores

We have invested heavily this year to drive improvements for our workforce and workplace, increasing access to a modern estate and providing our people with the tools they need. These improvements have maintained our Employee Engagement Index at 56% although engagement has trended downwards over the last five years, peaking at 59% in 2021 and 2022. The investments we are making are a positive step towards improving our engagement over time — working towards returning to, and improving on, previous highs.

Scores for 3 of the 5 core engagement questions have decreased slightly compared to 2023. Of these, the scores for colleagues feeling ‘proud when they tell people they are part of the organisation’ have decreased the most (2 percentage points decrease). However, scores for colleagues saying they would ‘recommend HMRC as a great place to work’ (53%) and saying they have a ‘strong personal attachment to HMRC’ (41%) have remained stable since 2023.

We are committed to having an inclusive and respectful workplace. 82% of colleagues said they were treated fairly at work and 88% said they were treated with respect by those they work with.

Combating internal fraud, bribery and corruption

We are alive to any internal threats and our zero-tolerance approach to fraud, bribery and corruption is set out in our ‘Counter internal fraud, bribery and corruption’ strategy, along with a policy and fraud response plan describing our response to these threats.

Our Chief Digital and Information Officer has accountability for the policy, which applies to all our employees, suppliers, contractors and business partners. We continue to promote a culture where our colleagues feel safe to raise concerns of wrongdoing – for example through our ‘in-confidence’ anonymous reporting system.

Supporting wider government economic aims through HMRC’s work

Alongside our main priorities of closing the tax gap, improving day-to-day performance and modernising and reforming tax and customs administration, HMRC supports the government’s Plan for Change and wider economic aims, for example through our work to support trade at the borders.

“I’m incredibly proud of the work Borders and Trade carried out during 2024 to 2025 to move us towards our ambition of having a world class customs regime that supports UK growth.

We have reduced the requirements on traders by providing modern, digital customs systems — with 2024 to 2025 representing a key milestone when we took our legacy CHIEF system offline and moved all traders over to our robust, customer-focused Customs Declaration Service. And we’ve played a key role in Windsor Framework negotiations and delivery, ensuring that processes for Northern Ireland traders are simple and frictionless.”

Carol Bristow
Director General, Borders and Trade and Head of the Tax Profession

Improving HMRC’s customs regime

As the UK’s customs authority and underpinned by our vision to be a trusted and modern tax and customs department, we continue to ensure the customs regime remains robust and effective to facilitate the smooth flow of legitimate trade. This involves close working with other government departments, agencies and wider industry. We are continuing to improve the stability and resilience of our systems, whilst focusing on easing the burden for our customers, improving services and simplifying processes. Collectively these priorities help ensure that our services can be trusted by our customers.

Delivering the UK’s new single customs declaration platform

During 2024 to 2025, we worked closely with traders to support the migration of all import and export declarations from the legacy Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight (CHIEF) system to the Customs Declaration Service (CDS).

CDS is now the single customs platform for traders to make import and export declarations when moving goods into and out of the UK, handling around 78 million declarations in 2024 to 2025. The platform ensures the correct revenue is collected, is more robust, flexible and secure, and is built on modern cloud infrastructure which is better able to meet the evolving needs of both traders and government.

Our previous systems were successfully decommissioned ahead of schedule by December 2024, delivering around £27 million per annum of savings.

In 2024 to 2025, we continued to support security and biosecurity controls and promote a more efficient trading experience for businesses. This included supporting checks on food and animals by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as well as through the successful introduction of Safety and Security declarations on imports into Great Britain from the European Union in January 2025.

Streamlining processes for our largest importers and exporters

On 21 January 2025 we delivered the fifth phase of the New Computerised Transit System which removes the need for a paper declaration to accompany goods while moving them under transit, thereby simplifying the customer journey for around 550 companies who routinely move goods into, out of and through the UK.

We are now working to implement the next phase of changes that will allow the UK to continue to meet its commitments under the Common Transit Convention, which simplifies customs procedures for transporting goods between participating countries.

Implementing the Windsor Framework

In September 2023, we delivered phase 1 of our commitments under the Windsor Framework, replacing the UK Trader Scheme with the UK Internal Market Scheme (UKIMS), without disrupting the flow of goods into Northern Ireland. UKIMS ensures that goods that stay in the UK are free from unnecessary paperwork, checks and duties.

Following a delay from 30 September 2024 to allow businesses adequate time to prepare for the changes, new customs arrangements for goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland via parcels and freight under the Windsor Framework were implemented from 1 May 2025. Our priority was to ensure a smooth transition that minimised disruption for all stakeholders, and we worked with businesses to ensure that they had the necessary information and support to adapt to the new arrangements effectively.

These measures ensure that goods that remain in the UK’s internal market no longer require full customs declarations and continue to move without paying duty. Parcels moving directly to consumers in Northern Ireland do not require customs declarations, safety and security declarations or duties. HMRC systems are operating as planned and we remain closely engaged with business groups to provide support on an individual basis as required.

We continue to support traders moving goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland through the free-to-use Trader Support Service (TSS). The TSS provides guidance on how to move goods into and out of Northern Ireland and can submit data to HMRC systems on traders’ behalf. The TSS supports over 88% of goods movements between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As of March 2025, over 61,000 businesses have registered for the TSS, and it has processed over 6.2 million consignments on behalf of traders. The current TSS contract ends on 31 December 2025; the government is committed to providing ongoing support for traders and in February 2025, published the procurement opportunity for the next phase of the TSS from 2026.

Freeports across the UK

Freeports (known as Green Freeports in Scotland) are areas within the UK that offer tax reliefs and customs benefits to eligible businesses, including importing certain goods with simplified documentation and with the suspension of tariffs. As of 31 March 2025, the HMRC Freeport Programme had successfully delivered its goals, contributing significantly to the establishment of all 12 UK Freeports, offering relevant guidance, IT processes, authorisations, site designations, bespoke communications products, and tailored engagement throughout the year.

Delivering financial support

As well as supporting trade, we play a vital role in giving individuals and families financial support.

Child Benefit and Tax-Free Childcare

In 2024 to 2025, we provided Child Benefit to 6.9 million eligible families, supporting around 11.9 million children. This includes the awarding of 825,532 new claims, 83% of which were submitted through our online service. HMRC also administers Tax Free Childcare (TFC) and Free Childcare for Working Parents (FCWP). FCWP’s eligibility was further expanded in 2024 to 2025 to provide eligible parents of children aged from 9 months to 2 years with 15 hours of funded childcare support. Approximately 826,000 families used TFC for 1,085,000 children in 2024 to 2025.

Tax credits closure

HMRC has administered tax credits since its introduction in 2003, supporting over 6 million low-income individuals and families at its peak and helping to ensure that work pays more than welfare. In 2019 we began the managed migration of eligible customers to Universal Credit (UC) and later, Pension Credit (both of which are administered by the Department for Work and Pensions, or the Department for Communities for customers who live in Northern Ireland). In 2024 to 2025, we completed the closure of tax credits, with most of the 650,000 customers migrated to UC or Pension Credit and the remaining 2,200 customers having their awards ended by 5th April 2025.

Protecting tax credits and Child Benefit from error and fraud

Our approach to tackling error and fraud for HMRC’s welfare products focuses on prevention – guiding customers to meet their obligations and manage their awards more effectively through strong pre-award controls, improved education and more efficient processes for customers to reconfirm their continued eligibility.

Our compliance strategy remains focused on the predominant cause of error and fraud, addressing unreported changes in circumstance. In 2024 to 2025, we agreed three new data shares with other government departments to help detect such changes. To support this, the government announced at Autumn Budget 2024 that it is investing in 180 new counter-fraud staff, which will increase HMRC’s capabilities to tackle error and fraud in Child Benefit (and Childcare Services). We expect this to deliver a net saving of £355 million from 2025 to 2026 to 2029 to 2030.

[Read more on the estimated levels of error and fraud for tax credits and Child Benefit in the Control challenges section of the Principal Accounting Officer’s report: Child Benefit error and fraud.]

Research and Development tax reliefs

Kickstarting economic growth sits at the heart of the government’s Plan for Change, and HMRC is helping to create the right conditions for businesses to thrive. One of the ways we’re doing this is through administering Corporation Tax Research and Development (R&D) tax relief schemes. Expenditure on R&D reliefs during the year 2024 to 2025 was £8.2 billion, which supported companies working on innovative projects in science and technology. It is important that the support these schemes provide is timely and effectively targeted, and that we actively balance our work to reduce error and fraud with the need to pay legitimate claims promptly. We exceeded our published aim to process 85% of claims within 40 days during 2024 to 2025, achieving 90% during this period.

The merged R&D Expenditure Credit and the Enhanced R&D Intensive Support (ERIS) have been in operation since April 2024. These reliefs replaced the previous small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) scheme and Research and Development Expenditure Credit (RDEC) with a new single expenditure credit scheme for companies of all sizes, and enhanced support for R&D intensive loss-making SMEs.

This is the third year that we have produced an error and fraud estimate for claims from SMEs using a mandatory random enquiry programme (MREP). This is the first MREP estimate that takes account of policy and operational changes made since 2022 in response to the levels of error and fraud. These changes included the introduction of the Additional Information form in August 2023 and increased compliance activity.

The overall estimate of the level of error and fraud in Corporation Tax R&D tax relief schemes in 2022 to 2023 is 9.9% (£759 million) of the estimated cost of the reliefs. The level of error and fraud in 2022 to 2023 is estimated as 14.7% (£652 million) for the SME scheme and 3.3% (£107 million) for RDEC. Expenditure on R&D reliefs during the year 2022 to 2023 was £7.7 billion [see note 4.1.5 in the Resource Accounts for further detail].

This is a reduction in the level of error and fraud of 7.7 percentage points (£578 million) overall and 11.1 percentage points (£551 million) for the SME scheme when compared to 2021 to 2022, before policy and operational changes were made.

This is the first year in which error and fraud has been estimated on an accruals basis to align with our accounts. Previously, estimates of error and fraud were based on expenditure included in claims received in the year of reporting, regardless of the year in which that expenditure was incurred and could therefore include expenditure which related to several years prior. For the 2022 to 2023 estimate, only expenditure incurred in the accounting periods ending within 2022 to 2023 is included. The final 2022 to 2023 estimate is based on a weighted average of the error and fraud rates from the last two MREPs. The most recent MREP only covers relevant claims received after the introduction of the Additional Information form on 8 August 2023. Therefore, we have assumed that claims which relate to 2022 to 2023 received prior to 8 August 2023 have the same inherent error and fraud as that reported for last years’ MREP.

We have also considered the impacts of policy and operational changes made to address error and fraud for expenditure in 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025. For illustrative purposes, we estimate that error and fraud for expenditure in 2023 to 2024 has reduced to an overall level of 6.5% (£497 million), and to 11.7% (£370 million) for the SME scheme. For 2024 to 2025, error and fraud for expenditure has reduced to an overall level of 5.9% (£481 million), and to 10.6% (£339 million) for the SME scheme.

[Read more about the calculation of the 2023 to 2024 and 2024 to 2025 estimates in the section Control challenges in the Principal Accounting Officer’s report.]

In October 2024, we published the Approach to Research and Development tax reliefs 2023 to 2024. This report set out an update on the scale and shape of error and fraud in the R&D schemes, action taken to date, and the impacts seen so far.

HMRC’s approach to managing the R&D tax reliefs is based on our overall compliance strategy of preventing error and fraud from entering the system, promoting compliance, and responding to non-compliance where it happens. This includes taking firm action against agents who have sought to abuse the relief and undertaking education campaigns for businesses to increase overall awareness of the conditions for eligibility.

In October 2024, the government also published the Corporate Tax Roadmap which set out the government’s corporate tax plans for this Parliament to provide certainty for businesses. This included a number of commitments on R&D, including maintaining the generosity of the reliefs whilst also delivering on commitments aimed at improving the administration of the scheme. This includes launching the R&D Disclosure Facility, publishing a consultation on widening the use of advance clearances and establishing an R&D Expert Advisory Panel to help provide insights into cutting-edge R&D and enhancing HMRC’s understanding of innovation and developments across various sectors.

Read HMRC’s Approach to Research and Development tax reliefs — October 2024 report on GOV.UK.

Protecting society from harm

Our enforcement activity helps support wider government economic aims by levelling the playing field for businesses and protecting individuals. We remain committed to our statutory responsibility as a supervisor to protect the UK against the risk of money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing, by improving compliance with Money Laundering Regulations in the sectors for which we are responsible. In 2024 to 2025, we delivered 3,006 supervisory interventions, suspended, or cancelled the registration of 59 businesses, refused 485 applications to register and issued 739 financial penalties for non-compliance worth £5.1 million.

It is a requirement that all businesses, irrespective of size or business sector, pay their workers at least the correct National Minimum Wage (NMW). HMRC enforces NMW on behalf of the Department for Business and Trade and in 2024 to 2025 proactively engaged over 12.1 million employers, workers, and their representatives, so they understand their obligations and educated workers to know their rights and how to complain. If anyone believes they are not receiving at least the minimum wage they can contact the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service or send a query online. We consider every complaint made.

This year we completed 4,764 interventions and spoke to 1,806 employers about their business practices and potential risks to NMW compliance. Through our proactive enforcement and supportive compliance, we found arrears of £5.78 million for more than 25,000 workers.

Compliance in COVID-19 financial support schemes

HMRC remains committed to COVID-19 scheme compliance activity and will continue to prioritise and pursue the most serious cases of abuse.

Since the start of the schemes and up to the end of March 2025, our compliance effort on the HMRC-administered COVID-19 schemes had prevented the payment, or recovered overpayment, of over £1.7 billion worth of grants, which includes £25.3 million recovered during 2024 to 2025. By the end of March 2025, we had opened 53 criminal investigations into suspected fraud within the schemes and made a total of 99 arrests. There have been 4 convictions so far. Further ongoing criminal investigation activity has yet to be concluded within the criminal justice system and is subject to those timescales.

Supporting government priorities

We hold one of the UK’s largest repositories of data and play a crucial role in cross government data sharing. We can use this to help support the government’s Plan for Change, by taking a leading role in cross-government programmes to make the state more modern and efficient, whilst helping to improve the customer experience and join up government services.

We already share significant volumes of data with other government departments, devolved governments and public bodies using over 250 legal gateways. Examples of data shares delivered in 2024 to 2025 include:

• working with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to support their business-critical work improving their UK-based population and UK economics statistics, and making data available to accredited researchers
• partnering with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to share benefits data, supporting customers to move from Tax Credits to Universal Credit, speed up fraud investigations and resolve changes in personal circumstances which impact customer claims during 2024 to 2025
• partnering with DWP to help automate benefits claims handling and decision-making for their Bereavement Payment Support Service; streamlining this public-facing service for families during difficult times
• working with several government departments and public bodies to support tackling fraud in the public sector

We are also working to simplify and modernise tax administration, so that businesses can spend their time growing their business and contributing toward the economic growth that is at the heart of the government’s Plan for Change.

[You can read more about how we’re simplifying and modernising tax administration, including how MTD for VAT is saving businesses time, in the section Reforming and modernising Tax and Customs administration.]

We work with other UK government departments and devolved governments to understand the tax, tax credits and National Insurance implications of a range of policies, including support and compensation schemes for people, to ensure that all liabilities are understood during the policy making process.

Supporting devolved governments

We work right across the UK, supporting the Westminster and devolved governments. We administer Income Tax on behalf of the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments and work closely with the devolved revenue authorities in Scotland and Wales to support each other in administering the taxes for which we each have responsibility. We consider the impact on devolved nations and their policies when developing our own policies.

Looking to the future

Through our core purpose, HMRC enables the delivery of vital public services and our Spending Review 2025 settlement reflects the importance of the work we do — whether that’s supporting economic growth, protecting society from harm or providing financial support to millions of people and businesses. From modernising our customs systems to supporting Freeports and tackling fraud, our work underpins the government’s Plan for Change.

We are proud of what we have achieved this year — but there is more to do. We remain committed to working collaboratively across government and with our stakeholders to deliver a trusted, modern tax and customs system that meets the needs of the UK.

John-Paul Marks
Chief Executive and First Permanent Secretary
15 July 2025