HMRC's service performance worse than ever Analysis by the Times of customer service standards at HM Revenue & Customs has found that targets are being missed in 14 service categories out of 27, including people appealing against tax penalties, getting self-assessment refunds and claims for the marriage allowance. Tax office staff can take ten months to fulfil basic tasks that are meant to take 15 days, the paper reports. Accountants have become so concerned about failings at HMRC that representatives of all four professional bodies have written to the director-general of customer services at HMRC, Myrtle Lloyd, about “longstanding concerns over service levels”. David Feldman, a former HMRC tax investigator for 30 years and currently a tax adviser in Cambridgeshire, said clients would be waiting “routinely a year” for resolutions to tax disputes. “When I saw that the Metropolitan Police had been put in special measures I thought the same should apply to HMRC,” he said. “The service is worse than at any time when I worked there.”