Research Specification to understanding the business customer benefits of the reforms laid out in HMRC and HM Treasury's 10-year Tax Administration Strategy

In July 2020, HM Treasury and HM Revenue & Customs jointly set out a 10-year Tax Administration Strategy (TAS) 'Building a trusted, modern tax administration system'1

The reforms set out in the strategy are:

• The extension of Making Tax Digital to help move the UK towards a fully digital tax system that works closer to real-time
• Improving our use of real-time information that will allow taxpayers to have a more up-to-date understanding and greater certainty over their tax position, with capacity for real-time risk assessment.
• The timely payment of tax that will allow people and businesses to pay the right tax with ease in ways that fit with how they live their lives and go about their businesses
• Delivering a secure and easily accessible single digital account/customer record to give taxpayers a single and complete financial picture bringing together their different taxes and data sources, and enabling HMRC to deliver more personalised services
• Improving services for agents and representatives that will enable HMRC to design in access for appointed agents and representatives from the outset, and support efforts to ensure high standards within the tax advice market.
• Reform of the tax administration framework to create a simpler, more transparent framework that helps build greater trust and provides greater certainty for taxpayers. The tax administration framework refers to the set of laws, regulations, processes and guidance that allow HMRC to administer the tax system.
• 2.3.While mapping the existing data aligned to understanding the benefits of these reforms, HMRC have identified an evidence gap for understanding the perceived benefits for UK businesses.
• 2.4.While HMRC are in a relatively strong position to demonstrate how the reforms set out in TAS will improve compliance, customer experience, and reduce HMRC costs, HMRC have less evidence supporting how the reforms will reduce customer costs or create productivity benefits for businesses and how these may build over time.
• 2.5.While there is some academic and international evidence to draw on, the lack of evidence applied to the UK leaves HMRC in a weak position to incentivise businesses to engage with our reforms, and have better evidence to inform the future direction of the TAS.

2. To do this, we need research to identify tangible customer benefits (e.g. productivity gains from going digital, from alignment of processes for different taxes, and increased ease of use of the tax system), that we can build into our planning.