Adopting tech for improved customer service

Welcome news for side-hustlers....

In a recent speech marking HMRC's 20th anniversary, Tax Minister James Murray announced a planned increase to the Income Tax Self Assessment (ITSA) reporting threshold. Currently set at £1,000, the threshold is expected to rise to £3,000, potentially freeing up to 300,000 people from the burden of filing a tax return.

This change will be particularly beneficial for those with a side hustle—whether that's selling clothes online, dog-walking, or creating digital content. At present, if your side income exceeds £1,000, you’re required to complete a tax return. With the new threshold, only those earning over £3,000 will need to file.

However, the £1,000 trading allowance remains unchanged. For instance, if you earn £1,200 from your side gig, you’ll only be taxed on the £200 exceeding the allowance, and you can report this through a new simplified online service.

While no firm date has been given, the change is promised “within this parliament.”

.....and HMRC promise to implement tech to improve their "customer" service

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have plans to use a callers voice as their password in an effort to speed up phone calls.

In systems that are being used by banks, a customer’s voice recording is turned into encrypted biometric data, which is then used when they call to clear security checks. HMRC are planning to trial a system like this.

HMRC has come under heavy fire for the poor handling of its customer service phone lines. According to statistics, for January through November last year, the phone line went dead on almost 44,000 callers who had been waiting 70 minutes.

The Public Accounts Committee in their January report concluded that HMRC was deliberately running a poor phone service to try and get taxpayers to use online help instead. Last year, HMRC announced that they were closing their phone line altogether between April and September. However, they had to reverse that decision the next day after a backlash.

It seems that efforts are now being made to modernise the phone service and make it more efficient, which is welcome news for taxpayers (AKA customers) and agents alike, but please forgive us if we don't hold our breath!

How about you?

We've been a bit more agile with the implementation of tech to ensure our customers get the best value for money from their accounting services; from a secure portal for communications and document approval, to using OCR to convert receipts, bank statements etc into data that can be understood by cloud-accounting software, and adopting integrated management accounting reporting, we're working hard to stay ahead of the curve.

So take a moment to ponder: How could tech improve your working habits and enhance your customer's experience?