HMRC manages expectations on service
In its latest newsletter to stakeholders, HMRC’s David Ellis is very clear about the current service standards that employers can expect from the department, and one would suspect that with more budget cuts to come, this will become business as usual.
He says that the position is:
- Repayments and forms – broadly five days old;
- Pensions and benefits – we are keeping these under 40 days old and hence the oldest items are dated in May;
- Customer letters (the catch all after the other two categories are removed) – this post is older but we are recovering ground on this quickly following the redeployment of resources to manage the notice of coding activity earlier this year – around 7% is over three months old.
HMRC has also turned off the ECS interface again which captures data from P46(car) forms and P11Ds, so employers need to make employees aware that if they want to see a prompt code amendment after submission of either form type, they will need to contact HMRC directly. No date for ECS to resume has been given at present.
