New Addition to HMRC Government Gateway Security

As part of HMRC’s Making Tax Digital strategy, we have been expecting security improvements to be made to taxpayers’ access to their online accounts via the Government Gateway.

On 29 March 2016, HMRC introduced a new optional layer of security that introduces a mobile phone into the logging in process for Individual taxpayers…

Chips and Gravy

So, now you may be wondering why anyone at TaxCalc would be writing a post about chips and gravy. 

Well, we ask our customers if they have a couple of minutes to complete a survey after any remote log in session or email correspondence with us. This gives us an idea of how we are performing in relation to the support that we provide our customers. We also have a similar survey for feedback about the product itself.

We continually review the results and the comments received from these surveys and would like to thank everyone who left the fantastic comments we received throughout January 2016.  However, it seems that we just weren’t specific enough for one customer when we asked for additional comments. They took the opportunity to tell us that they like chips and gravy! ...

Gathering Customer Feedback

We are now in the second week of January and we are pleased to report that, in Support, we are exceeding expectations with an average wait time of just 26 seconds last week.

I mentioned in my previous article that we listen to our customers, and we really do! Part of our review process for cases involves looking at how many customers would like a feature or change to be implemented, so we rely on customers telling us what they want…

Customer Service at TaxCalc

At TaxCalc, we care about our customers and providing excellent customer service is at the heart of the business. HMRC wait times have been in the news a lot recently and of course it comes as no surprise to anyone that, during a recent Which? Survey, it was revealed that their average wait time between 25 September and 2 October 2015 was 38 minutes – and this wasn’t even during January, the busiest time of the Self Assessment season!

Support Hours

Christmas is approaching, so it’s time to inform our customers of our opening hours throughout the holiday period.

As usual, we’ll be keeping a support service running during this time because we appreciate that some limited companies accounts and tax returns need to be submitted by 31 December. And, as usual, we'll be extending our January support hours to help our customers at this busy time.

• Christmas opening hours - we will be providing email support on 29, 30 and 31 December between 9am and 5:30pm.

• January opening hours – our extended support hours during this month are:

o    Monday – Friday: 9:30am and 8pm

o    Saturdays: 10am and 4pm (commencing 9 January)

o    Sunday 31: 10am and 4pm

Emails will also be monitored during the evening of 31 January.

We wish you a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

The Office of Tax Simplification on Small Companies

The Office of Tax Simplification have released a survey to collect opinion about the taxes that small businesses pay to HMRC. The overall aim is to help them make recommendations to the powers that be that set our taxes.

The survey is open to those businesses that employ 10 or fewer people and covers all taxes.

If you would like to take part and voice your opinions, please follow this link.

Protecting Yourself from Phishing Scams

In something of an irony (considering who’s received it), a phishing email beat my spam filter last night and landed in my personal inbox. Purporting to come from HMRC, I apparently have a VAT tax refund waiting for me and need to follow the link to fill out a form to claim it. What excitement for a Thursday evening!

I think that everyone will agree with me that this is really quite a suspicious looking email. However, looking today at the kinds of emails TaxCalc generally receives from HMRC, especially with regard to VAT and VAT MOSS, even official emails from HMRC can appear to be quite generic.

For example, VAT return reminders are addressed to Sir or Madam and VAT MOSS emails to just “VAT MOSS user”. Whilst said emails may quote the name of the company and our VAT number, these can easily be found on our website. 

The email prompted me to think about how we can stay safe with phishing scams.