HM Revenue & Customs - Self Assessment Online and PAYE

“The key reason the EzGov Europe software was chosen was the ease and speed at which customers can now communicate with us (and us with them). Citizens are now able to send their tax return over the Internet from any PC with a reasonably modern browser, so people can use it from the library or work, and indeed can use different PCs at different times if they don’t want to complete the tax return in one go. For many employers, using the web-based service will simply be a feature of the payroll or accounting software they already use.”

EzGov Europe & HM Revenue and Customs

EzGov Europe has been working with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) since 2000, and in that time has successfully delivered and maintained 7 major online tax systems. Together these systems have processed over 15 million submissions to HMRC, with many servicing 50% or more of their target audience. Additionally all EzGov’s system releases to HMRC have been made on time and to budget, and EzGov have averaged over 95% in HMRC customer satisfaction surveys. These facts make the e-service partnership with HMRC one of the most successful operating in the UK today. 

Self Assessment Online and PAYE Online

HMRC is responsible for providing an effective and fair tax service to UK citizens and businesses. One of their original objectives under a wide-ranging initiative to provide online services to citizens was to create a nationwide online tax filing system for individual taxes (Self Assessment Online – ‘SA’) and payroll taxes (Pay As You Earn Online – ‘PAYE’) using an efficient and user-friendly system. In September 2000, HMRC (then Inland Revenue) selected EzGov Europe to deliver the two online tax filing applications. Their decision was based on the fact that EzGov had the technical expertise and track record in delivering high quality online e-services. Moreover, our iterative development and implementation processes would considerably reduce time and risk elements within the development project. EzGov Europe successfully delivered both applications in just 12 weeks. HMRC immediately began to realise significant efficiency benefits; while over 40% of paper submissions were incorrect online submissions showed error rates of less than 1%. This allowed HMRC staff to move from back-end submission processing to front-end customer-facing tasks. EzGov and HMRC have continued to improve both SA and PAYE since that time, achieving impressive results in take-up & user satisfaction, as evidenced by the following events.

• In 2002 EzGov recommended and implemented innovative improvements in the User Interface for both PAYE and SA, designed to make the systems more usable for the general public. (This focus on usability has since become a best-practice technique for similar applications). The improvements coincided with an HMRC marketing campaign aimed at attracting users to the site. The result was a 340% increase in people filing electronically in 2002/2003. Today SA reaches 50% of its target audience, while 60% of small employers file PAYE online, and the number of electronic submissions continues to grow by an average of 140% per year.
• 93% of people in the 2004/2005 tax year said in surveys that they will return to use SA the following year.
• The success of PAYE & SA is such that in 2006 Lord Carter of Coles published a report recommending that PAYE submissions must be 100% online by 2010, and online SA submissions be made online by “IT Literate Groups”.
• The Carter review also estimated cost savings for HMRC of £65 million per year over a seven year period through the use of an online channel, based on HMRC’s ability to redeploy staff from back-end to front-end tasks.
• In 2007, in order to deliver against Lord Carter’s recommendations HMRC’s outsourced IT supplier (Aspire) partnered with EzGov to develop HMRC’s new online portal architecture. This portal architecture has since been proposed as a cross-Government Enterprise Architecture (xGEA) exemplar for wider use across government.  EzGov was also selected to redevelop the SA and PAYE applications on the new architecture. The new SA application also included a major user interface redesign and was successfully completed on time for the 2007/2008 tax year.

Other Applications

As well as SA and PAYE, EzGov has also developed several other major online applications for HMRC, namely: Corporation Tax Online; Stamp Duty Online; Construction Industry Scheme Online; Offshore Account Industry Compliance Scheme; Centre for Non-Residency Online.