The tax department has been working to improve the performance of its helplines after several years of significant difficulties, and the current year has recorded marked progress on two fronts

HM Revenue and Customs has answered an additional 12% of citizens’ calls in the 2025/26 financial year while cutting average telephone waiting times by more than five minutes, according to a minister.

Across the whole of the 2024/25 year, the tax agency failed to answer almost three in every ten calls made to its helplines, with just 71.5% of calls getting through. While the success rate across the first six months of the current year did not reach the department’s stated target of 85%, there has been a significant improvement, with 83.8% of calls answered. This equates to a 12.3% percentage-point increase, compared with the prior year.

Meanwhile, the average length of time citizens waited for their query to be dealt with – which stood at 18 minutes and 38 seconds in FY25 – has also been reduced markedly so far in 2025/26. From April until September of this year, wait times stood at 13 minutes and 30 seconds, on average – meaning calls were answered more than five minutes quicker than in the prior year.

These figures were cited by Lord Spencer Livermore, the financial secretary to the Treasury, who said that “improving day-to-day performance is a key priority for HMRC”.

“HMRC are taking steps to make sure more of their services are digital,” he added, in response to a written parliamentary question from unaffiliated peer Baroness Kate Hoey. “HMRC online services and the HMRC app are convenient to access and receive high customer satisfaction ratings. As more people use HMRC online services, advisers are freed up to support those with more complex queries and those who are digitally excluded.”

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HMRC’s customer service performance has been subject to much scrutiny – and no little criticism – over the past few years. In its annual report for the 2023/24 year, the department said that “we recognise service levels have caused real difficulties for customers and agents”.

There were signs of recovery the following year and, in the month of October 2024, the department achieved its stated baseline target of answering 85% of all calls to its helplines. This came after 39 consecutive months of falling short of this mark – sometimes by more than 30 percentage points.

But, underscoring the importance of HMRC’s drive to direct more and more service users to digital channels, in 2024/45 auditors classified more than three quarters of calls to the agency’s helplines as avoidable.

The Spending Review earlier this year provided £500m in funding to support the department to deliver an objective that “a minimum of 90% of customer interactions will be digital self-serve” by the 2029/30 year. As of summer 2025, the total was 70%.