HMRC’s Mid-sized Business temporary Customer Compliance Manager (tCCM) – supporting businesses with their compliance
HMRC is trialing a new service aimed at helping mid-sized businesses. Discover how this may help your clients or you.
The service provides temporary support to businesses experiencing considerable difficulties in managing tax affairs, businesses in crisis, businesses facing uncertainty and businesses planning for growth.
HMRC’s Mid-sized Business (MSB) team acted on customer feedback which indicated improvements were required to the customer support that was on offer. The feedback indicated there was a declined confidence in the way tax-payers accessed support services: The reduction in direct human interaction when their businesses were experiencing life events was the cause of some additional unease.
Following the feedback, HMRC’s MSB team created the temporary Customer Compliance Manager (tCCM) model, a service aimed at providing time-limited one-to-one support for tax-payers undergoing life events. A test and lLearn of the model began in January 2022 and the effectiveness of the model is currently being evaluated with results expected in the summer of 2023.
HMRC is anticipating the model will be continued, and there is currently capacity to support a small number of additional MSBs through the model. Areas where HMRC has been able to provide support include, but are not limited to, MSBs who:
- Are going through life events,
- Experiencing periods of significant growth,
- Have multiple enquiries, often across HMRC,
- Have multiple complex issues,
- Are experiencing significant delays in their interactions with HMRC,
- Are involved with a significant volume of communications with HMRC.
The model works by appointing a tCCM to act as a single point of contact within HMRC for an agreed period of time. This will be determined by the nature of the tax issues, but usually ranges from 3 – 12 months. The tCCM will act as a facilitator, setting timeframes, providing assurances and structured support and having oversight of all current HMRC interventions and tax issues impacting on the customer. This will include working collaboratively across MSB, including tax specialists in different regimes, to ensure support is offered at the correct time. The tCCMs will not replace tax specialists, who will continue to work compliance interventions, but will work alongside the tax specialist(s) ensuring support is provided across the whole tax system, and not limited to singular tax regimes.
To access tCCM support please use our customer portal found at http://www.gov.uk/guidance/get-help-with-a-tax-issue-as-a-mid-sized-business. Alternatively, you can search “get help with a tax issue as a mid-sized business”.
There will be a webinar released April/May to provide further guidance on how the tCCM model may be of benefit to you and your clients. Some topics of discussion will be:
- How a tCCM supported a large manufacturer business with circa £2.5m repayments outstanding which was having a significant impact on cash flow.
- How a tCCM brought together long-running enquiries on a fashion retailer business providing much needed certainty to the business by ensuring all enquiries were routed by the correct contact points.
- How a tCCM provided support to a rapidly expanding tech firm who had undergone multiple acquisitions, ensuring correct statuses were recorded avoiding penalties for dormant entities.
Once the tCCM relationship has ended, which will be either once the life event has ceased, or the agreed timeframe has ended, the mid-sized business will still have access to direct support by using the MSB Customer Support Team, who can be contacted at www.gov.uk/guidance/get-help-with-a-tax-issue-as-a-mid-sized-business
If there are any specific points you’d like explained in more depth please contact the ICAS Tax team at tax@icas.com and they will collate responses to share with HMRC to allow them to be covered in the webinar.
If you have a client who you feel would benefit from tCCM support, or would like to discuss their option then please contact the customer portal at http://www.gov.uk/guidance/get-help-with-a-tax-issue-as-a-mid-sized-business