HMRC announced that it collected £517.7bn in tax in 2014/15 – an increase of £11.9bn on the previous year. The increase is cited as being as a result of economic growth and the continued crackdown on tax evasion and avoidance.

The figures were set out in HMRC’s annual report and accounts for 2014/15. But is everything rosy in the HMRC garden?

The report, published by the National Audit Office, examines HMRC performance over a range of areas including tax revenues and spending, the tax gap, compliance yield and tax credits error and fraud. Once again, the Comptroller & Auditor General has qualified his regularity audit opinion on the 2014–15 Resource Accounts because of material levels of fraud and error in the payment of personal tax credits.

Commenting on the report, the head of the National Audit Office made clear that whilst HMRC may have met its strategic objectives over the last Parliament to increase tax revenue while cutting its administrative costs, it made less progress in improving customer service. Whilst there are ambitious plans to modernise tax administration in the coming five years, these carry substantial risks. The introduction of new digital services whilst replacing the Aspire contract for IT services was particularily highlighted.

Also published around the same time were HMRC’s Business Plan Indicators for Quarter 4 2014–15. These statistics examine a number of indicators across a range of areas including postal and phone performance. It should be noted that the figures published are initial management information to provide an indication of HMRC’s performance, and are therefore subject to revision and audit.

No commentary has been made on the publications as yet but it is clear that HMRC are struggling to achieve improvements in key areas with some worrying deteriorations noted. In particular, it is noted that contact centre call stats indicate that the % of call attempts handled by HMRC’s contact centres within 5 minutes has fluctuated significantly over the 2014–15 period with March 2014–15 showing an overall result of 66.5% (91.2% 2013–14).

This statistic in particular is a key factor in the recent announcement that HMRC is allocating £45 million to improve service to cover the cost of paying for the recruitment of around 3,000 additional staff this year and for allocating around 2,000 staff from other HMRC business areas.

The % of post received by HMRC and cleared within 15 days sat at 70% in Quarter 4 (82.6% Quarter 4 2013–14).