HMRC Phones Lines and Online Contact Down

The Treasury Select Committee Chair, Harriet Baldwin MP, yesterday wrote to the chief executive of HMRC, Jim Harra, suggesting the Committee has a “serious concern” that HMRC tweeted yesterday that technical issues had shut down all HMRC phone lines except for a national clearance helpline.  Some online services are still working.

This means taxpayers have no way to contact HMRC about queries on any tax matters such as:

• Coronavirus (COVID-19).
• Self assessment.
• Tax credits.
• Child Benefit.
• Income Tax.
• National Insurance.
• Tax for employers.
• VAT.
• Construction Industry Scheme.
• Fake emails from HMRC that you think might not be genuine.

Baldwin wrote to HMRC demanding an urgent update what reinstatement actions were being taken given that lines had already been down 24 hours and what plans were being made to ensure that a complete loss of service does not happen again.

Comment

As at today, services are still down see: https://www.gov.uk/contact-hmrc.  We have to say, yet again we find it staggering that large government service organisations as well as big banks and insurers have little or no contingency plans.  Too much money wasted by people with no accountability.  We saw it during covid-19 lockdown and we are seeing it again

We are all required to have disaster recovery plans and even our business has contingency in place for immediate telephone diverts, website ‘clones’ and back up servers to go live again automatically, alternate office/working facilities that can be up and running within an hour if systems ever fail.