Helping our customers at HMRC

We deal with over 40 million customers who range from large corporations to smaller businesses and individuals.

We have put in place building blocks designed to make HMRC a more customer-focused organisation. These include customer-focused units, which deal respectively with: small and medium enterprises; large businesses; individual customers; and people and goods travelling to and from overseas.

Engaging with customers

We have undertaken to develop our engagement with key interest groups. We have promised to involve them in our future plans and provide them with opportunities to influence how we deliver our Departmental Strategic Objectives /Public Service Agreements targets by:

• early and effective consultation
• listening to and giving due consideration to their ideas and opinions, providing feedback on outcomes
• sustaining and developing relationships, building on trust and understanding.

Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs)

There is increasing opportunity for small and medium sized enterprises to do business with Government departments. We try to ensure that companies are invited to tender for work which is compatible with their capacity and capabilities, and, in line with Government policy. Small firms are included on our tender lists if we consider they can reasonably compete on value for money terms.

Our 'Small and Medium Enterprises and Employers Customer Unit' is co-ordinating our efforts to reduce the administrative burden that tax places on our customers in the SME sector. Following the research that took place in 2005/06, the Government announced new targets in the 2006 Budget to:

• reduce the administrative burden on business of dealing with our forms and returns by at least 10% over five years
• reduce the administrative burden on business of dealing with our audits and inspections by 10% over three years, and at least 15% over five years.

Individual customers

We have a dedicated Customer Understanding Team made up of social and market researchers, psychologists, customer analysts and economists. The team is uniquely placed in HMRC to deliver specialist, practical support and insight into customer needs. This inter-disciplinary team will help us to achieve our ambition to put the customer at the heart of everything we do. This innovative way of working is, we believe, unique in government and represents leading edge thinking in public sector customer understanding.

Human Rights

We are regulated by the Human Rights Act 1998(HRA) which came into force on 2 October 2000. From that date, the civil, political, economic and social rights and freedoms guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights were incorporated into domestic law. This means that rights given under the Convention may be relied upon directly in UK courts and tribunals. It is now unlawful for any public authority, including HMRC, to act in a way that is incompatible with another person's human rights.