A fifth of HMRC callers give up

Waiting times on HMRC’s self-assessment helpline are now four times as long as they were five years ago, climbing from an average of five minutes in 2017 to almost 20 minutes this year. The number of abandoned calls has doubled from 300,000 to 600,000 in five years, with one in five callers giving up. Before the pandemic, the tax office had a target of no more than 15% of customers waiting more than ten minutes to speak to an adviser. HMRC has failed to meet that ten-minute target for 91% of callers this year, not including those who gave up.

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