Written Question: Processing Tax Returns

Lord Moylan: To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the rate at which His Majesty's Revenue and Customs are currently processing income tax returns compared to previous years, and what steps they are taking to improve the processing of income tax returns in advance of submissions in January.

Financial Secretary to HM Treasury (Lord Livermore): By the end of January 2024, over 11.5m tax returns had been submitted for the 2022/23 financial year. Around 97 percent of returns received were online and the majority were processed automatically.

HMRC carries out additional processing work on a small percentage of tax returns. This includes checks, addressing amends made by customers and manually working through returns which are made on paper. This year HMRC is on track to meet targets for processing paper Self Assessment returns which is consistent with previous years.

To ensure taxpayers get support to meet their obligations for filing 23/24 returns, HMRC has recently recruited and trained additional customer service advisors.