Engaging with a digitalised tax system: Experiences of vulnerable citizens and small tax practitioners

All UK citizens are required to comply with their tax obligations. Failing to comply might result in gaol-time. Yet, some taxpayers struggle to deal with the UK’s complex tax rules, resulting in errors, penalties and financial hardship/distress. Tax agents and vulnerable taxpayers (especially) find it difficult to access assistance from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) (Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT), 2024; Closs-Davies et al., 2021, 2024a, 2024b). HMRC’s announcement in March 2024, of the closure of its self-assessment telephone helpline for six months, and intention to push taxpayers/agents toward HMRC online services and deal thereafter only with (undefined) priority queries, proved pivotal.


HMRC’s online services, intended to provide greater efficiency, consistent with New Public Management ideology (Powell et al., 2010), are ineffective at helping taxpayers and agents. Agents using HMRC telephone and online channels reported low satisfaction levels in both 2023 and 2022 (HMRC, 2024). While HMRC claimed that about two-thirds of helpline callers can deal with their own query online, professional commentators (e.g., the Low Income Tax Reform Group and the CIOT) remain sceptical: while accepting that digitalised services may work effectively, they query their resilience and fitness-for-purpose in supporting the needs of all taxpayers.


A substantial part of the UK tax gap (the difference between tax theoretically due and amounts actually paid) relates to taxpayers “not getting things right”, partly demonstrating the “impact of an overly complex tax system” (CIOT, 2024). This highlights how important support is, through interactions between taxpayers, agents and HMRC, to minimise errors, help taxpayers pay the right amount of tax, and, more broadly, reduce the tax gap.


This raises an important question about accountability between the citizen (taxpayer) and the State (tax authority): should the State be accountable to citizens in helping them deal with tax rules, or should citizens be accountable to the State for being self-responsible for their tax compliance? This paper examines the role, implications and manifestation of accountability through interactions between taxpayers, agents and HMRC.


Some critical accounting literature examines the concepts of public sector accountability (Ezzamel et al., 2005; Hyndman and Liguori, 2024), noting its dependency on transparency (Hood, 2010, Ferry and Midgley, 2024), and the resulting, significant consequences: it shapes power, entrusting it to those who reveal/withhold information (O’Neill, 2006). Here we view transparency as the provision/withholding of information and assistance that can (dis)empower and reinforce stigma (Closs-Davies et al., 2024a; 2024b), enable blame (Heald, 2012), and restrict citizens’ capacity/desire to comply with tax rules.


Tax studies within critical accounting literature are relatively scarce. As a crucial public sector element, more attention needs to be paid to tax regarding frontline accountability, service delivery boundaries and the role/impact of technology/digitalisation. This paper uses three qualitative empirical studies, revealing in-depth experiences of small tax practitioners and two vulnerable groups of people (tax credit claimants and older low-income individuals, the latter dealt with by the charity, Tax Help for Older People) in using HMRC services. This study is timely, given recent comments about HMRC’s accountability regarding its Charter and pursuance of a wholly digitalised tax system.