Reform Unveils £30 Tax Credit for Britons Stuck on the Phone to HMRC for Over 30 Minutes
Reform UK has unveiled a striking new proposal aimed at transforming the way Britain’s tax authority deals with members of the public and small businesses. Under the plan, taxpayers who are forced to wait on the telephone for HM Revenue and Customs for more than 30 minutes would receive a £30 credit against their tax bill. The proposal, announced by Reform’s Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick, is intended to put pressure on HMRC to improve its customer service and reduce lengthy waiting times.
The policy is deliberately simple and highly visible. Rather than merely promising to improve HMRC’s performance, Reform wants to create a direct financial consequence for the tax authority whenever taxpayers are left waiting too long. Jenrick argued that if HMRC causes unnecessary delays, it should effectively compensate the people who have been forced to waste their time. The proposal would therefore turn poor customer service into a measurable financial liability for the organisation.
Under Reform’s proposal, the £30 credit would be available when someone spends more than half an hour waiting for HMRC to answer a call. To prevent excessive claims or deliberate attempts to exploit the system, the credit would reportedly be limited to two occasions in each tax year. The party says the policy is designed particularly with small businesses in mind, as business owners can lose valuable working hours when they are unable to resolve tax issues quickly.
The announcement reflects a wider Reform UK strategy of presenting itself as a party willing to challenge government bureaucracy and reduce what it considers unnecessary regulation. The party has argued that taxpayers should be treated as customers rather than simply as sources of government revenue. If people are required to comply with complicated tax rules, Reform believes the government should provide an efficient service when they need assistance.
This argument is likely to resonate with many small-business owners. For a large corporation, a delayed telephone call may be an inconvenience that can be absorbed by a large administrative team. For a small company operated by one or two people, however, spending 30, 40 or 60 minutes waiting for HMRC can represent a significant loss of productive time.
Small businesses often have limited resources. Owners may be responsible simultaneously for sales, payroll, accounting, customer service and strategic decisions. When they have to spend large amounts of time dealing with government bureaucracy, that time cannot be used to serve customers or develop their businesses.
Reform has therefore attempted to connect the HMRC proposal with its broader message on economic growth. The party argues that Britain needs to make it easier for entrepreneurs and small businesses to operate, invest and employ people. Cutting bureaucracy and improving government services are presented as relatively inexpensive ways of making the economy more business-friendly.
The proposal is also politically attractive because it is easy for voters to understand. Tax policy can often involve complicated percentages, thresholds and exemptions. By contrast, the message behind the HMRC proposal is straightforward: if the government keeps you waiting for more than 30 minutes, it should pay you £30.
Such a policy can be particularly effective politically because almost everyone who has dealt with a government helpline understands the frustration of being placed on hold. The issue is not necessarily limited to HMRC. Long telephone queues have become a familiar complaint across public services, making the Reform proposal part of a wider debate about whether government departments provide value for money.
Jenrick has also proposed tying the pay of senior HMRC officials to customer-service performance. The idea is that senior management should have a direct financial incentive to reduce waiting times and improve the quality of service. If the organisation performs poorly, its leadership would face consequences rather than leaving ordinary taxpayers to bear the cost of inefficiency.
This proposal reflects a broader philosophy of performance-based government. Reform argues that senior public officials should be judged on measurable outcomes rather than simply on whether they have followed internal procedures.
Supporters may see this as common sense. In the private sector, companies that consistently provide poor customer service can lose customers and revenue. Reform’s argument is that government departments should face comparable incentives to improve their performance.
However, critics have raised questions about how the £30 credit would work in practice.
One of the most important challenges is administration. The government would need a reliable way to determine how long each caller waited before speaking to an HMRC employee. It would also need procedures for verifying claims, preventing fraud and applying the credit to the correct tax account.
A tax-credit system based on telephone waiting times could therefore create its own bureaucracy. Ironically, a policy intended to reduce government inefficiency could require HMRC to establish a new administrative system to record waiting times, assess eligibility and process compensation.
Tax and business advisers have questioned whether the proposal would be affordable. Blick Rothenberg has warned that Reform’s wider package of tax pledges lacks detailed information about how it would be funded. Regarding the HMRC credit specifically, the firm suggested that implementation costs could run into millions because of the systems required to verify claims and prevent abuse.
There is also a question about the potential size of the payments. HMRC reportedly received around 24 million telephone calls during 2025. If a significant proportion of those calls lasted more than 30 minutes before being answered, the cost of £30 credits could become substantial.
One estimate cited by Blick Rothenberg suggested that if roughly 15 per cent of calls qualified, approximately 3.6 million calls could generate credits, producing a theoretical cost of around £108 million. That figure is only an estimate, and the actual cost would depend on how the scheme was designed and how many calls met the eligibility criteria.
This raises an important question: would the policy save taxpayers money by improving HMRC’s efficiency, or would it simply create another government expense?
Reform’s answer is that the financial incentive is precisely what would force HMRC to improve. If the tax authority knows that every unnecessarily long call creates a financial liability, senior managers would have a strong reason to invest in better staffing, technology and processes.
The proposal is therefore intended to be more than compensation. Its real purpose is behavioural change.
The government would effectively be saying that HMRC’s performance has a price.
There is also a technological dimension to the debate. HMRC has increasingly encouraged taxpayers to use online services rather than telephone assistance. Digital systems can reduce pressure on telephone lines and allow routine transactions to be completed without human intervention.
However, not every taxpayer has the confidence, knowledge or circumstances necessary to resolve complicated tax issues online. Small businesses in particular may need to speak directly to an adviser when dealing with unusual circumstances or complex tax questions.
Critics of government digitisation therefore argue that forcing people online can create another barrier rather than solving the underlying problem.
Reform’s proposal is designed to address that concern by making telephone support more accountable. If HMRC wants taxpayers to use digital services, the argument goes, it should still provide an effective telephone service for people who genuinely need human assistance.
The Labour government has rejected Reform’s broader approach, accusing the party of failing to provide sufficient detail about how its policies would work. A Labour spokesperson argued that Reform was making promises without explaining how they would be funded or what safeguards would be required. The government also pointed to its own support for small businesses and economic growth.
This criticism highlights a wider problem facing Reform UK. The party has become increasingly influential in British politics, but its opponents are demanding greater detail about the cost and practical consequences of its proposals.
The £30 HMRC credit is a useful example. Politically, it is highly attractive. Financially, however, the government would need to establish exactly how many credits would be paid and what systems would be required to administer them.
There is also the possibility of unintended behaviour. If taxpayers know that a 31-minute wait generates a £30 credit, could some people deliberately remain on the line even when other options are available? Could automated systems or technical problems create disputes over the precise moment at which a qualifying waiting period begins?
These problems do not necessarily make the proposal unworkable, but they demonstrate why implementation details matter.
The idea of compensation for poor public services is not entirely unusual. Governments and regulators already use compensation mechanisms in some sectors when service providers fail to meet standards. Reform is essentially proposing to apply a similar principle to HMRC.
The political question is whether the incentive would be strong enough to change behaviour.
If HMRC improved its telephone response times dramatically, Reform could claim the policy had succeeded even if relatively few taxpayers ultimately received the £30 credit. The objective would not be to distribute large amounts of money but to make poor service financially unattractive.
That distinction is important. A successful scheme could eventually cost less than expected precisely because HMRC would respond by reducing waiting times.
For Andy Burnham’s Labour government, the proposal presents a different kind of political challenge. Reform is attempting to claim the language of efficiency, lower taxes and support for small businesses. Labour must therefore demonstrate that it can offer its own credible programme for improving government services without simply dismissing Reform’s proposals.
The debate is also connected to the wider issue of public confidence in government. Citizens generally accept that they must pay taxes, but they also expect the state to use their money efficiently. When taxpayers spend long periods trying to contact the organisation responsible for collecting their money, frustration can quickly become political resentment.
A policy such as the £30 credit taps directly into that frustration.
Ultimately, Reform’s proposal is both a practical idea and a political message. It tells taxpayers that government departments should be accountable for the quality of the service they provide. It tells small businesses that their time has economic value. And it reinforces Reform UK’s broader argument that Britain’s public sector needs stronger incentives to become more efficient.
Whether the proposal would actually work is a more complicated question.
The £30 credit could encourage HMRC to improve its telephone service, but it could also create additional administrative costs and potential opportunities for abuse. The policy’s success would depend on accurate measurement, clear eligibility rules and effective enforcement.
Most importantly, it would need to produce a genuine improvement in customer service rather than simply transferring money from one part of the public finances to another.
For Reform UK, however, the proposal has already achieved an important political objective: it has placed the everyday frustration of dealing with HMRC at the centre of the debate about government efficiency.
The party is betting that voters will respond positively to the idea that if the state wastes their time, it should compensate them.
Whether that message translates into wider support will depend on Reform’s ability to demonstrate that its promises are not merely attractive headlines but financially credible and practically deliverable policies.
For now, the proposed £30 tax credit represents a clear challenge to the traditional relationship between government and taxpayer. Rather than asking citizens simply to accept delays and bureaucracy as an unavoidable part of public administration, Reform UK is proposing a new principle: if government fails to provide a reasonable service, taxpayers should not always be the ones who pay the price.