Corporate report

[Withdrawn] Our strategy

Updated 1 April 2021

This corporate report was withdrawn on 21 April 2021

This page has been archived as the strategy no longer reflects HMRC’s current strategic objectives, which were revised in April 2021, or the government’s 10-year strategy to build a trusted, modern tax administration system, published in July 2020.

1. What we do

We are the UK’s tax, payments and customs authority, and we have a vital purpose: we collect the money that pays for the UK’s public services and help families and individuals with targeted financial support.

Our vision is to be a world-class organisation – and our work is underpinned by our values:

• We are professional
• We act with integrity
• We show respect
• We are innovative

We have 3 strategic objectives, and everything we do is focused on delivering these for the UK. They are to:

1. Maximise revenues due and bear down on avoidance and evasion
2. Transform tax and payments for our customers
3. Design and deliver a professional, efficient and engaged organisation

Note: our strategic objectives were revised in April 2021: you can read them on the ‘About us’ page on GOV.UK.

2. Delivering our strategic objectives

This strategy explains the 8 key decisions we have taken in order to help us achieve our mission and strategic objectives and become a ‘world class organisation’.

2.1 Maximise revenues due and bear down on avoidance and evasion

Key decision 1: Focusing on our customers

We are segmenting customers by type and size, and tailoring our customer services based on behaviours, capabilities and the level of risk.

At the heart of our successful delivery is the way we work with our customers, which is why we have reoriented our activity around five clear customer groups:

• large business
• mid-size business
• small business
• individuals
• wealthy

This enables us to use systems, processes and services that are closely tailored to the requirements of each group, while maintaining fairness and consistency across the board and addressing cross-cutting behaviours. Criminals are, of course, dealt with outside of these groups and are subject to a very different approach.

Key decision 2: Promoting compliance and preventing non-compliance

We are promoting compliance and preventing non-compliance as early as possible in each customer’s relationship with us, while responding strongly to deliberate non-compliance.

The best way to tackle non-compliance is to prevent it happening in the first place, while cracking down on the minority who do break the rules, so we are:

• promoting good compliance by designing it into our systems and processes, enabling customers to get their affairs right from the outset
• preventing non-compliance by using the data we have to spot mistakes, prevent fraudulent claims, personalising online services and automating calculations
• responding to non-compliance by identifying and targeting the areas of greatest risk, and using tough measures to tackle those who deliberately try to cheat the system

Key decision 3: Reducing the likelihood of disputes

We are reducing the likelihood of disputes by helping more customers to get their affairs right, but where disputes occur we resolve them by agreement or through litigation – whichever best secures the tax that is legally due.

We achieve this by applying the law fairly and even-handedly, while working together with our customers wherever possible.

2.2 Transform tax and payments for our customer

Key decision 4: Digital tax accounts

We are using sophisticated digital tax accounts and other online services as our main way of interacting with customers, making it easier for them to see all their affairs in one place and harder for them to make mistakes – but we’re still providing direct support to those who need it.

We are making it easier for people and businesses to pay the right tax and claim the right entitlements at the right time, by launching user-friendly digital services. This means we can focus more of our resources on those who need extra support, and on targeting those who don’t play by the rules.

The data that these digital services generate will allow us to target customer self-service and online support more effectively.

Key decision 5: Supporting intermediaries

We are supporting intermediaries to play an active role in collecting tax and providing data, so we rely less on customers providing their own data.

Where possible, we use independent third parties (such as employers) to collect tax on our behalf – this is the most effective and efficient means. We also look for other ways to work with intermediaries to bring in the best data (for example, to populate digital accounts) helping us collect the right tax, calculate entitlements and ease the burden on our customers.

Key decision 6: The important role of agents

We welcome the use of agents to represent customers where they add value in helping their clients to get their affairs right.

Agents can play a key role in helping people meet their obligations, while also supporting us in our ‘one to many’ relationship with customers

2.3 Design and deliver a professional, efficient and engaged organisation

Key decision 7: Skilled and sustainable workforce

We are moving towards a more highly-skilled and sustainable workforce through better training, development and by creating a new, modern network of large regional centres.

To deliver for our customers in a changing world, we are building on the skills and expertise of our people, and working in new, more collaborative and flexible ways. We are putting the right people in the right places, doing the right work, with the right skills, using the latest digital tools. We are also ready to review the way we work once the implications of the UK leaving the EU become clearer.

Key decision 8: Delivering for government

We are using our assets and capabilities to deliver wider government aims, and to design new services and systems that other government departments can use in the future.

We work closely with HM Treasury to design effective tax and customs policies, and we play a vital role in supporting wider government aims, such as:

• using tax reliefs to support economic growth
• facilitating international trade through our customs processes
• enforcing the national minimum wage
• working with devolved administrations on tax and other matters

We also work with others, where appropriate, to build our systems and processes with the potential to support the aims and objectives of other government departments.

3. Our strategic principles

To help us to deliver on these eight key decisions and guide our decision-making in future, we follow a set of strategic principles for everything we do:

• customer-centric: we understand our customers through data and insight, so we can better tailor and target our support
• simplicity: we design our systems, products and processes around customers, to make it as easy as possible for them to deal with us
• integration: we design a tax system that integrates with third parties and business software
• proportionate and even-handed: we deploy our resources in a fair and targeted way to ensure no one is out of reach
• cost-efficient: we use digital services and smart data to work more efficiently, driving down the cost of the tax system for customers and the public purse

We are applying these not only to our core customer service and compliance work, but also to our other activities – from the tax credits and other benefits we administer, to our customs work and the support we provide to other public bodies and charities.

We work and consult closely with a wide range of different groups and stakeholders, such as customer representatives and software developers, to make sure we are getting our strategy right.

4. Turning strategy into action

Ultimately, our strategy drives the development of all our business plans and our transformation programme.

To ensure we deliver on all of this, we are holding ourselves to account against a series of annually-agreed public targets, and we are using management information systems to continuously monitor and improve our performance.