Reform: £30 rebate for HMRC phone delays
Reform UK proposes a £30 tax credit for taxpayers who wait over 30 minutes on HMRC calls, limiting the credit to two occasions per year. The party also plans to tie senior HMRC officials’ pay to customer-service targets and overhaul data-protection rules.
Reform UK has announced that taxpayers who wait more than 30 minutes on an HMRC call will receive a £30 credit on their tax bill. Robert Jenrick, the party’s economy spokesman, said the measure would be limited to two occasions per tax year.
Call wait times and digital shift
HMRC claims its customer service has improved markedly over the past two years. The agency reports an average call waiting time of 11 minutes and that 80 % of interactions now occur digitally, with millions using the HMRC app. The shift to online services is intended to free advisers to focus on vulnerable or complex cases.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Average call wait time | 11 minutes |
| Digital interactions | 80 % |
| Customers cut off after >1 hour | 44,000 |
The Public Accounts committee, in a January 2025 report, accused HMRC of seeking to “degrade its telephone service to drive taxpayers to digital channels.” The committee noted that nearly 44,000 customers were cut off without warning after being on hold for more than an hour in 2024, and that HMRC’s treatment of taxpayers had damaged trust in the tax system. Jenrick highlighted these findings, which HMRC’s former boss dismissed as “completely baseless.”
Reform’s broader agenda
In addition to the phone-delay rebate, Jenrick pledged to scrap UK privacy rules in favour of a “light-touch” approach to data protection. He criticised the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as having “strangled” tech firms and small enterprises. The proposed framework would replace GDPR with rules modelled on New Zealand’s privacy legislation, which Reform says is the lightest-touch regime still recognised as adequate by the EU. Labour has accused Reform of wanting to “scrap vital safeguards that protect people’s private data” with its “unworkable and unserious plans.”
Reform also plans to tie the pay of senior HMRC officials to customer-service performance, aiming to give the agency a “big incentive to actually provide proper customer service.”
HMRC response
HMRC said 80 % of customer interactions now take place digitally, reducing the time spent on the phone to advisers who handle vulnerable or digitally excluded customers or those with particularly complex problems. A spokesperson added that overall customer satisfaction is around 80 % and that more people than ever are using digital services, including millions using the HMRC app.
The agency’s spokesperson also noted that its customer-service performance has improved significantly, with average call wait times now around 11 minutes.
The proposal comes as the tax return deadline looms, and HMRC has been under pressure to improve its telephone service. The Reform plan would give taxpayers a tangible benefit for long waits and could prompt a shift in how the agency prioritises its call-handling resources.
For more detailed statistics on the impact of digital services, see our stats page. The broader context of public-sector reforms can be found in our fixtures section.
