“While it is encouraging to see improved digital services for taxpayers in the roadmap, the plans are not transformative. Significant gaps in HMRC’s digital services are likely to remain for many years to come.

“Services for tax advisers continue to lag behind services for taxpayers. Meaningful transformation of digital services for tax advisers hinges on the development of new platforms and agreed permissions.

“The gap in services available to taxpayers and agents will grow in the short-term, while improvements for tax agents to address key pain points will be a tactical stop-gap solution until new platforms are established.” 

On income tax liabilities:

“The roadmap does not indicate how HMRC intends to join up the different ways in which income tax liabilities are finalised – either by PAYE reconciliation, simple assessment or self-assessment – into one coordinated income tax system.

“HMRC’s different income tax systems do not interact properly, which causes errors and drives customers to contact HMRC. However, this problem is not addressed in the roadmap.”

On new penalty system:

“The plans fail to include the date for switching to the new penalty system, and there will no doubt be confusion and unfairness while the two penalty systems run side by side. 

“The new points-based penalty system, which applies to taxpayers that sign up for Making Tax Digital for income tax, is generally less harsh than the current penalty system as it allows taxpayers to be late with at least one submission before charging a financial penalty.

“Any new penalty system should be rolled out to all taxpayers at the same time.”

On migration:

“HRMC has previously indicated that it intends to migrate the rest of the self assessment population to its new IT platform at some future stage, but this is not mentioned in the roadmap. 

“This is a significant gap as this migration is a critical step if HMRC is to develop and improve digital services.”

ENDS

Notes to editors: