Reform unveils £30 tax credit for Britons stuck on the phone to HMRC for over 30 minutes

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Reform's Robert Jenrick has unveiled plans to back British businesses with a new tax credit, while also holding HMRC to account

Reform UK has announced plans to introduce a tax credit for Britons who are left waiting on the phone to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for more than 30 minutes.

Earlier this morning, the party's Treasury spokesperson Robert Jenrick confirmed those affected will receive a £30 tax credit at the end of the tax year if Reform wins power.

To ensure the tax authority meets its targets, Reform will link the pay of senior HMRC officials to their customer service performance.

Notably, if senior officials fail to make progress on waiting times, they will be fired.

This latest announcement from Reforms comes after MPs accused HMRC of “degrading its own services” to push people to use its website.

According to the Federation of Small Business, the average small business owner spends 44 hours and £4,500 a year on complying with tax laws, which is a 10 per cent rise from 2021.

Notably, British taxpayers were found have been left waiting 23 minutes on average in 2023/4, which is a five-minute jump from 2018/19.

Based on data from the National Audit Office (NAO), some 50,000 calls were ended by HMRC without the taxpayer being helped , because they crossed their maximum waiting time of 70 minutes,

Citing employee earnings data for 2025, Reforms claims that HMRC waster 14 million hours of taxpayers' time on the phone during 2023/24; which is the equivalent of £275million in wasted productivity.

As part of the proposed policy, Reform's tax credit would be limited to two instances in a given tax year and only given as a non-refundable tax credit, so only taxpayers would receive it.

Mr Jenrick said: "The British people have lost countless hours of their lives stuck on the phone to HMRC.

"Under Reform, that ends. If HMRC delays you, they can repay you. We will restore basic fairness to the taxpayer."

Following today's confirmation that Ofgem's energy price cap will rise in October, Mr Jenrick called for the Labour Government to "drop the net zero dogma".

He added: "This is going to be a very difficult period ahead. Households are being battered by energy price increases. Energy prices will have risen by 17 per cent since April alone.

"My message to John Healey and Andy Burnham is very simple: drop your net zero dogma. Do what Reform have proposed. Get rid of the green taxes and levies that have been ladled onto people’s energy bills by stealth.

"If you do that… you will save the average household £200 off their energy bill. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anyone would want to put net zero ideology above the interests of British people this winter, who are going to find life very, very tough."