HMRC Personal Tax Account beta assessment report
HMRC's Personal Tax Account beta assessment report
Service Standard assessment report
Personal Tax Account
| Assessment date: | 8 September 2026 |
| Stage: Type: | Beta Assessment |
| Result: | Amber |
| Service provider: | HMRC |
Service description
This service aims to solve the problem of
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The Personal Tax Account is non-transactional but enables easy access to other digital services offered to individual HMRC customers.This service aims to solve the problem of being able to find the service needed to complete any given interaction with HMRC, by putting them all in a single place accessible via a single login.
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The PTA has been active for a number of years in a tiled design, the scope of this assessment is to review the change to move to a tabular design as supported by User Research.
Service users
This service is for… any individuals within the United Kingdom tax authorities as an individual.
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PAYE customers
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Self-Assessment customers
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National Insurance customers (either to access their National Insurance number or to see years qualifying for State Pension
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Child Benefit customers
Things the service team has done well:
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The team demonstrated a strong commitment to evidence based design throughout the project. It was impressive to see how the tabular design evolved in response to research conducted throughout discovery and alpha. It was encouraging to see the use of mixed methodologies in private beta to test and iterate designs through interviews, unmoderated testing and surveys.
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The team demonstrated a strong understanding of service performance, using baseline data and performance insight to inform service design and improvement decisions.
1. Understand users and their needs
Decision
The service was rated green for point 1 of the Standard.
2. Solve a whole problem for users
Decision
The service was rated green for point 2 of the Standard.
3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels
Decision
The service was rated green for point 3 of the Standard.
4. Make the service simple to use
Decision
The service was rated amber for point 4 of the Standard.
This is amber
● due to low numbers of testing on mobile devices, the team is encouraged to increase the number of mobile testing.
5. Make sure everyone can use the service
Decision
The service was rated green for point 5 of the Standard.
6. Have a multidisciplinary team
Decision
The service was rated green for point 6 of the Standard.
7. Use agile ways of working
Decision
The service was rated green for point 7 of the Standard.
8. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service was rated green for point 8 of the Standard.
9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy
Decision
The service was rated green for point 9 of the Standard.
Advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
● the team could think about increasing the confidence level required to access the service. The current confidence level being used (CL200) is due to be deprecated in favour of a more secure level (CL250) on the MDTP platform
10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data
Decision
The service was rated green for point 10 of the Standard.
Advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
continue work to identify and implement the remaining GDS performance indicators, and publish performance data.
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continue to ensure that measures of user success remain aligned to user needs and service objectives.
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consider using planned A/B testing and user feedback data to further validate the impact of service improvements and design decisions.
11. Choose the right tools and technology
Decision
The service was rated green for point 11 of the Standard.
12. Make new source code open
Decision
The service was rated green for point 12 of the Standard.
13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns
Decision
The service was rated green for point 13 of the Standard.
14. Operate a reliable service
Decision
The service was rated green for point 14 of the Standard.
Advice to help the service team continually improve the service:
● the team should update their existing performance test suite to include journeys going through the new design to ensure the redesign has not affected performance of the service
Next Steps
Amber - beta
This service can now move into a public beta phase, subject to addressing the amber points within [three months] time and CDDO spend approval.
This service now has permission to launch on a GOV.UK service domain with a beta banner. These instructions explain how to set up your *.service.gov.uk domain.
The service must pass a live assessment before:
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turning off a legacy service
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reducing the team’s resources to a ‘business as usual’ level, or
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removing the ‘beta’ banner from the service