HMRC to close tax helpline for six months a year from April; jobs at risk as Ted Baker ‘prepares to appoint administrators’ – as it happened

Here’s our news story about HMRC’s controversial plan to shutter its telephone hotline for half the year:

Time for a recap…

• HM Revenue & Customs has announced it will permanently close its self-assessment helpline for half the year, which will leave some taxpayers unable to speak to the tax authority on the phone.

  The phone line will be closed between April and September each year and open only to taxpayers with “priority queries” between October and March, HMRC announced.

  The move has been criticised, with the Chartered Institute of Taxation calling it “misguided”.

• Hundreds of jobs could be at risk after the owner of Ted Baker filed a motion to appoint administrators to the ailing high street retailer.

  Authentic Brands Group, which bought Ted Baker in 2022, blamed the build-up of “a significant level of arrears” at No Ordinary Designer Label (NODL), the company which trades as Ted Baker.

• In other retail gloom…. furniture retailer DFS has cut its sales and profits forecasts for the year, after a drop in orders, and warned that further Red Sea disruption could push some profits into the next financial year.

• Japan’s central bank has ended eight years of negative interest rates, by lifting interest rates slightly into positive territory today.

• Unilever is to cut 7,500 jobs globally and spin off its ice-cream division as part of an overhaul aimed at saving about €800m (£684m) over the next three years.

• The Culture Secretary has said she is “minded to” refer the gulf-state backed takeover of the Telegraph newspaper group for an in-depth investigation amid concerns the deal could threaten free speech.

• Economic confidence in Germany has picked up, according to the ZEW institute.

Hundreds of high street jobs are at risk after the owner of fashion chain Ted Baker moved to push its British operations into administration, Sky News reports.

They say that No Ordinary Designer Label, which is owned by Authentic Brands Group (ABG) and trades under the Ted Baker brand, filed a notice of intention to appoint Teneo Financial Advisory as administrators on Tuesday.

The move is expected to result in store closures and job losses, although the scale of both was unclear, Sky says.

Ted Baker was taken over by ABG in August 2022 for £211m.

Its share price has previously slumped in 2018 amid difficult trading conditions for clothing brands, and a scandal over a culture of “forced hugs” under its founder, Ray Kelvin, which led to his exit from the company.

The company was then hit by the emergence of an accounting error and a string of profit warnings, before its core market for suits and outfits for social events was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.

HMRC says its push towards online self-service for Self Assessment and VAT is “a vital element” of the modernisation of the tax system.

Angela MacDonald, HMRC’s Second Permanent Secretary and Deputy Chief Executive, said:

Online services have transformed our lives and often provide a better service for managing tax – they’re quicker, easier and always available.

Changing our services to encourage customers to self-serve online wherever possible will allow our helpline advisers to focus support where it is most needed – helping those with complex tax queries and those who are vulnerable and need extra support.

We must maximise every pound of taxpayers‘ money. Embracing online self-service allows us to help more customers and improve our customer service levels without spending additional public money.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is closing down much of its telephone help services for months, as part of a push to make peope use its website instead.

The tax authority has announced that:

• between April and September, the Self Assessment helpline will be closed and customers will be directed to self-serve through HMRC’s highly-rated online services

• between October and March the Self Assessment helpline will be open to deal with priority queries – customers with queries that can be quickly and easily resolved online will be directed to HMRC’s online services

• the VAT helpline will be open for 5 days every month ahead of the deadline for filing VAT returns – outside of this time, customers will be directed to use HMRC’s online services

• the PAYE helpline will no longer take calls from customers relating to refunds – customers will be directed to use HMRC’s online services

• HMRC advisers will continue to always be available during normal office opening hours to support customers who cannot use online services or who have health or personal circumstances that mean they need extra support

• all other helplines will continue to operate as they do currently

Chair of the Treasury Select Committee Harriett Baldwin MP isn’t impressed, saying:

“It is a great shame that HMRC have decided now is the time to essentially close down any avenues for people to contact them over the phone for huge parts of the year. I say once again, these are well-meaning people just trying to get their taxes right.

“We’ve heard time and time again that every effort is being made to direct people to resolve issues online. The Committee welcomes efforts to make the tax system more efficient but HMRC has not yet demonstrated that the department or the public are ready to make such a monumental change to how they resolve tax issues. This should not be forced upon taxpayers until there is evidence that people know how to do their taxes on HMRC’s incredibly complex website.”

A report last month showed that customer service levels at HM Revenue and Customs have sunk to an “all-time low”, with customers suffering long call-waiting times due to high demand….

Newsflash: the UK’s culture secretary is minded to refer the takeover of the Telegraph newspaper by an United Arab Emirates-backed consortium to a full-scale review by competition authorities.

In a written statement Lucy Frazer, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, says she has considered the views of regulators Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), adding:

On the basis of the regulators’ assessments, I can now confirm that I am minded to refer this merger to a Phase 2 investigation on the grounds of the need for accurate presentation of news and free expression of newspapers.

A phase 2 investigation could probably take several months, meaning the deal could be scuppered by new legislation to ban foreign state ownership of newspapers.

Fraser explains that Ofcom has found that the deal could operate against the public interest, and allow the influencing of the accurate presentation of news and free expression of opinion in the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph newspapers.

Fraser says she will give the relevant parties until 25 March to make representations before reaching a final decision.