Reform pledges £30 tax credit for callers kept on hold by HMRC
Reform UK has said that under a Reform government, taxpayers kept on hold by HMRC for more than 30 minutes would receive £30 off their tax bill.
The policy was announced by Robert Jenrick, the party’s economy spokesman, at a press conference in central London on Wednesday 26 August. Jenrick said the tax credit would be limited to two occasions in a given tax year to prevent abuse, and that the pay of senior HMRC officials would be tied to customer service targets.
“Frankly, it is offensive to working people and I have had enough,” Jenrick said. “So, we will give HMRC a big incentive to actually provide proper customer service. I’m announcing today that under a Reform government, if you spend more than half an hour waiting for HMRC to answer your call, you will get a £30 credit off your tax bill. If HMRC delay, they can repay.”
The announcement draws on long-running criticism of HMRC’s telephone service. A highly critical report by the Public Accounts Committee in January 2025 accused the organisation of seeking to “degrade its telephone service to drive taxpayers to digital channels”. The report said nearly 44,000 customers were cut off without warning after being on hold for more than an hour in 2024, and that HMRC’s treatment of taxpayers had damaged trust in the tax system.
The findings were rejected as “completely baseless” by the then boss of HMRC. The department has said it has since improved its response times, and it points to the growing share of taxpayers who now manage their affairs online.
Jenrick also used the event to set out plans to scrap the UK’s data protection rules. He said the General Data Protection Regulation, adopted as domestic law after Brexit, had “strangled” tech firms and small enterprises, and proposed replacing it with rules modelled on New Zealand’s privacy legislation, which Reform says offers the lightest-touch regime still recognised as adequate by the EU.
The plans drew an immediate response from Labour. The party accused Reform of wanting to “scrap vital safeguards that protect people’s private data” and dismissed the proposals as “unworkable and unserious”.
The HMRC pledge is part of a package of policies Jenrick says are aimed at helping small firms, a constituency Reform is courting ahead of the next general election. He argued that the tax authority’s treatment of taxpayers, including long waits and the use of automated systems, had become a symbol of what he called an unresponsive state.
HMRC has been contacted for a response to the latest announcement.
The proposals were first reported by the BBC. Read the full report at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c804rd7leppo.