I saw a thread on this subject last week which suggested the best way was to use HMRC's chat function. I am currently trying to do this via the "Self Assessment Chat" facility and I have been waiting for over twenty minutes. The estimated wait time is currently 18 minutes and rising. Correct that, 20 minutes now!
Surely there is a better way. Any suggestions? HMRC make everything impossible these days!!
Related resources
Replies (22)
Please login or register to join the discussion.
If only they could improve things by providing a phone service for things like this. A snappy name could be the Agent Dedicated Line.
Oh, hang on a minute
Just to update everyone, I called the ADL at the same time as starting the Chat. The ADL call was answered after approximately 50 minutes and beat the Chat function by around 5 minutes.
For once I spoke with a useful member of staff who closed my client's SA record and said everything would be processed within a week which was great. I will qualify this by saying that, prior to this, I had tried calling the ADL and spoke with a complete @rse who refused to help and, when I asked who I should complain to, simply put the phone down on me.
The chat facility was truly awful experience with wait times updating on my screen every couple of minutes and regularly rising despite the fact that I had been waiting for longer than before.
Does anyone have advice on how best to proceed if I need to take another client out of SA? Was I using the correct chat facility for a start?
you are pretty much there - wait times will be variable i did one via chat as adl line operator refused point blank - that took less than 5 minutes as there was no wait. So you have to be prepared if you ring up in january to be told to f ck off by the advisor in polite terms.
Ideally its best to batch 2-3 together and sort via same person so you only have one waiting period - geta decent advisor and they may do more.
Thanks rmillaree. It's good to know it isn't my approach that is wrong. Just HMRC's systems that are terribly poor.
I have to say, it is frustrating that HMRC are so short sighted that they take away an effective system of communication and replace it with a load of cr@p. I find that dealing with HMRC is harder than at any previous point in my career which is quite depressing as it was never great in the "good times"!
Even more depressing is the "knock on" effect of this which will surely be more errors being made, more time spent by accountants and HMRC to put these right, therefore even longer wait times / poorer service standards from HMRC due to under resourcing.
Jim Harra seems utterly deluded about the job he is doing. The sooner he goes the better.
Rant over
And in his place will come whom?
The organisation lacks APPROPRIATE strategic investment.
It has been run down of "humans" for too many years, recruiting poorly educated staff with no sense of work ethic or commitment.
There aren't many advantages of being 80, but everyday I thank the good Lord that I'm now well out of acting professionally for anyone. My heart goes out to all of you still in practice. Life and a working relationahip with HMRC seems to be hellish.
being frank i would ignore all the bitchingb that goes on here - there are many things to [***] about but nowadays
we can get full bank feed of clienst transactions - xero will do old skool mini type bank rec to doay you like,
Expenses can all be coded via rules
clients can update all records to shared folder we can view
we can submit vat returns at teh press of a button and we can view all clients payments made to hmrc to see where they ahev been allocated.
the agent helpline helplines when they answer do their job 90% of the time plus without hassle
we can view all clients paye income sources via IRV including live current tax year data
Physical records are les common cash records are less common cash transactions are less common.
So while there are plenty of obstacles hmrc unecessarily place in our way overall its never been easier. I remember the days when we had to photocopy all the last minutes returns what had been done on paper form as there was no software - load em up into bosses car with list of returns been delivered and drive to the tax office and wait in the queue with everyone else.
Plenty to [***] about but plenty of stuff is much less hassle than it used to be. The happy peeps are probably down teh pub or out walking tehir dog rather than commenting that is the case here.
Ah........someone as old as me. Remember joining a queue of cars just before midnight driving into the local Inland Revenue car park and stuffing the last returns through the letter box before someone sealed it. Such fun!
And being able to pick up the phone and speak to a LOCAL tax inspector in your nearby tax office if you had a problem, or even have lunch with an inspector as a means of maintaining the relationship between the firm and the Inland Revenue. Those were the days, enjoyable days, with a minimum of frustration.
agreed - particualr kudos used to go to the employer year end local teams where they did a very good job of keeping the lights on when the it wasnt a patch on what it was today. If there was an issue with allocations or numbers not adingb up ring em - they knew their job and they sorted - you wanta fax of payments made no problemo.
There's a very neat graph waiting to be drawn that encapsulates the grand canyon gap between HMRC and the rest of us:
x-axis = efficiency (measured as perceived satisfaction, from 0 to 100)
y-axis = mix of human & IT support (from all-human all the way up to all-IT)
There will only be two lines on the graph:
... one representing the HMRC view (which starts in bottom LH corner and rises to top RH corner); and
... one representing the rest of us (which starts in bottom RH corner before sloping back to top LH corner)
Voila ... a perfect 'cross' shape - demonstrating the maximum divergence possible between both parties!
I'd love it if they managed to implement an all IT system, as a concept I think MTD is great and absolutely needs to be where the tax system goes.
The problem is that someone other than HMRC needs to specify, design, and build it because they're completely incompetent at large scale software development and infrastructure.
Add to this the ability to meet the LOCAL inspector at the LOCAL Commissioners' hearings and sort matters there...
I find the most efficient way is to carry on filing tax returns for them until HMRC advise they've decided to take them out of self assessment as they've realised it's not needed.
I think for a client whose only income is PAYE and no longer needs a return, filing tax returns for six years would involve less work than one attempt at having the record stopped over the phone or web chat, and you'd likely only need three or four returns before you got the letter.
Write a quick letter. They get round to it eventually, so it saves a lot of time.
That's assuming you don't want removal before 31st Jan though for a 22/23 TR.
Thanks Susan. I wanted to ensure that the client was taken out of SA before the January 31st deadline to avoid extra admin of appealing the inevitable late filing penalties that would have followed.
Thankfully the ADL did the job and my client shows that a return was submitted (by HMRC rather than me) on Jan 5th 2024 so all's well that ends well.
I didn't particularly care for the online chat facility which took far too long to get an answer. Indeed, on my experience, took about 5 minutes longer than the wait for the ADL to be answered.
Thanks for the suggestion though.
In my experience, this seems to be one of the few things that the call centre/chat staff handle fairly well. It's something they seem able to actually help with and don't try to argue on the basic facts. It's just the getting through to them bit that hurts.
In my experience, this seems to be one of the few things that the call centre/chat staff handle fairly well. It's something they seem able to actually help with and don't try to argue on the basic facts. It's just the getting through to them bit that hurts.
Hi Retrocanary. I disagree. It USED to be one of the few things that the call centre staff handle fairly well but I spoke with two staff members who flatly refused to help with this because of the new rules about what they were allowed to discuss with "customers". This is the reason I posted.
I was struggling to use the chat box function which I had never used before but was also having equal difficulty getting help from the ADL. Having received two knock backs from the ADL, I was making a third attempt to get what I considered a simple task resolved by (a) trying to use the online chat function which I had never used before and (b) simultaneously calling the ADL again. I typed the question in the 45 minute wait for either of them to talk to me.
Thankfully, on my third attempt at resolving this through the ADL I found a helpful member of staff and, as in the old days, this led to a successful conclusion.
The reason for my post was (a) trying to see if I was using the correct chat facility in order to get a successful resolution to my issue and (b) a bit of venting my frustration at the poor service.
It seems that HMRC are now trying to discourage agent's from using the ADL for this type of query by re-directing them to the online chat facility.
I don't have an issue with this approach if the ADL staff will direct you to exactly WHICH chat facility they want me to use and when I get to the correct place, that it is answered quickly. My experience was very far from this. The member of staff on my 2nd call to the ADL wouldn't (or couldn't) direct me to the chat facility so I was left confused. When I did get to the correct place, instead of speaking to a member of staff online, the message was a series of wait times which suggested a 20 minute wait, then the wait time updated every couple of minutes often going up rather than down. Finally, after a 50 minute wait, I got through to the chap box staff but, as I have already explained above, I was already talking to someone helpful on the ADL by then.
The forum is useful if we share our problems to help accountants with similar issues get better resolutions. I'm still not sure how I would tackle the issue next time. I would probably go for the chat box option as it seems I was unlucky with the 50 minute wait time.
At least with the chat function you can a) do proper work while waiting; b) don't have to listen to the awful hold music; c) don't get shouted at by that patronising woman telling us to do it online and that your call is important every 2 minutes
But you can't really though Beach. I did once and didn't answer the bot in time. They promptly ended the chat despite the fact I'd been waiting for ages for a reply. I find it easier to leave the phone on speakerphone and do work on the side.
