Tax boss Homer resigned

HM Revenue & Customs tells me:

Lin Homer told the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, in the summer of 2015 that she wanted to leave at the end of the 2015-16 financial year, after completing the 2015 Spending Review.

Like any other employee who hands in their notice, Lin is leaving without any compensation payments.

End of 0845 for tax calls

By the summer, the tax people at HMRC say they will have stopped ripping people off through the use of costly 0845 numbers.

People ringing for tax help using a mobile can pay 41p a minute after dialling 0845. Typically they then have to wait 6 minutes and millions are kept waiting for more than 10 minutes.

From April, calls about Child Benefit - which is now being taken away from high earners -- will be via numbers with the 03 prefix, which is already being used for tax credit enquiries.

03 calls should count as part of inclusive minutes in a phone contract and are charged at the same rate as 01 or 02 numbers.

All customer calls will be switched to the 03 prefix by the "end of the summer" according to HMRC officials who were giving evidence to MPs today.

Here's a useful guide to phone number prefixes.

Waiting to speak to HMRC

The UK's head of tax, Lin Homer, has admitted to MPs that typical telephone waiting times of over 4 minutes do not include the time spent listening to recorded messages, which can be more than 2 minutes.

HM Revenue & Customs is setting itself a new target, from April, of making 80% of people wait no longer than 5 minutes to speak to a real person, including recorded messages.

Lin Homer, chief executive and permanent secretary at HMRC, was answering questions from the Commons Public Accounts Committee, in the wake of a National Audit Office report which calculated that taxpayers were losing £136m a year in call charges and wasted time.

Last year, HMRC failed to answer 26% of calls - or 20 million calls in total. Of the callers who did get through, millions had to wait more than 10 minutes.

Over the winter the proportion of calls not picked up has fallen to around 10%.