Revenue. Taxation. Internal revenue
Research Topic
Language: English
This is a research topic created to provide authors with a place to attach new problem publications.
Research problems linked to this topic
- How does HMRC compare to best practice and what current and future technologies could be utilised to improve customer experience?
- How can HMRC use and evaluate how effective technological solutions are for customer contact, such as webchat, asynchronous messaging, apps and digital accounts?
- Is confidentiality important for voluntary compliance?
- How common are various administrative burdens and what is their impact on customer experience?
- What are the barriers and challenges for financially vulnerable Self Assessment and corporation tax customers on low-incomes or who have (or are at risk of falling into) tax debt and how can they be best supported?
- How can HMRC provide better support through our digital services to reassure customers when meeting their tax obligations?
- How can we most effectively use resource (such as, permanent, contingent and outsourced staff) to optimise customer experience of the service provided?
- Trust in the tax system and the role of confidentiality: are there circumstances when confidentiality should be waived?
- What are the barriers to using pre-payment that our Self Assessment customers face?
- How do customers' experiences in the lifecycle of their engagement with HMRC impact their behaviour (channel use, timely payment, compliance)? For example, how does channel preference differ depending on the nature of the customer’s query? What else impacts a customer’s channel choice, and therefore which channels HMRC should offer customers to make it easy to get tax right (including tax compliance)?
- How should government utilise other data sources from third parties, are there any concerns or benefits from government knowing more about its citizens?
- What future functionality will HMRC require for this?
- How can HMRC best collaborate on research or analysis that brings together data from different departments and public bodies?
- What are the cashflow implications of Self Assessment for income and corporation tax?
- What is the public perception of tax fraud in respect of; the scale and severity of fraud, the most common customer groups participating in fraud, the likelihood of detection and the consequences of committing fraud (segmented by behaviour, customer group and tax type)?
- What are the compliance implications of tax reliefs?
- What will future demographic, economic and other changes mean for future level and mix of demand for HMRC customer services through different channels?
- What issues arise from sharing data with external/commercial partners and organisations?
- What are the best ways to design a customer contact strategy for maximum uptake of digital channels, while still maintaining excellent and accessible services, supporting vulnerable customers and customers who need additional help through an appropriately paced transition?
- What are customer attitudes to HMRC collecting and using protected characteristics data?
- What are the implications of effective resource usage for contact centre opening hours and staff training, staff allocation between phone and webchat, and signposting to digital services?
- How will technological developments and organisational digital transformation impact customer contact demand patterns and productivity? (For example, will the queries advisers handle become increasingly complex with customers using digital self-serve to handle less complex queries?).
- What are public attitudes to HMRC taking opportunities to collect and use data that could help improve wider policy and service delivery for citizens and businesses rather than only for a specific purpose?
- What financial pressures does new housing put on local authorities? How does this vary between types and tenure of home, and to what extent are these costs recovered through developer contributions, council tax and other forms of local authority revenue?
- What is the digital capability of the HMRC customer base? Does this change over time and, if so, how?
- What proportion would be capable of; self-serving through digital channels, would need support to do so, and would be digitally excluded from using such services?
- What have been the effects of business rate reforms on local growth (both over the short and longer term)?
- What prevents Self Assessment taxpayers from using HMRC’s Estimator Tool for Self Assessment taxpayers and the Budget Payment Plan? And what would motivate more taxpayers to do so?
- How and where in the events in the lifecycle of a business can HMRC most effectively support small businesses to get their tax right?
- What novel/innovative approaches do other tax authorities use to prevention and redress non-compliance in areas such as small business and research & development, and what can be learned from them of relevance to the UK context?
- What is the relationship between customer experience and revenue outcomes?
- What are the implications of using AI models and what are their impacts on different customer groups?
- How would timely payment of Self Assessment income and corporation tax impact on taxpayer’s administrative burdens?
- How can HMRC better understand the impact of using different digital communication channels compared to more traditional methods of inbound communication from customers?
- How is communication from customers impacted by the stage of contact, HMRC resource strategy and changing economic/political environments?
- How is productivity in managing such contact best measured over time to create a comparable time series?
- How can government finance regeneration and recycle the benefits to reduce the costs to taxpayers?
- How will the needs of customers who need extra help evolve over time as we modernise the way we interact with customers, and how can we use future technology to better support these customers?