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About this report

The information in this report is required by Regulation 2 of the Equality Act Specific Duty Regulations (SI 2011/2260). It:

• shows how the department complies with the Public Sector Equality Duty in section 149 of the Equality Act 2010
• covers the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025
• summarises our progress against our equality objectives for 2024 to 2028

HMRC equality objectives 2024 to 2028

HMRC has 3 equality objectives for 2024 to 2028. They are to become a more inclusive, respectful and representative organisation. They apply to our work with customers and as an employer. Our equality objectives help us to be an employer of choice and support HMRC’s strategic objectives, as well as complying with statutory obligations. 

For further information, see HMRC’s equality objectives for 2024 to 2028.

Customer-focused activities

Research and insight

To help ensure we consider the needs of customers in all that we do, HMRC commissions research and insight to understand customer impacts. The 2024 General Election impacted our research commissioning and publication processes but the following research was published between April 2024 and March 2025:

• Understanding the starter and leaver process amongst small and medium-sized enterprise employers and employees – published on 26 September 2024.
• Exploring customer views on granular authorisations for agents within Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment – published on 26 September 2024
• Qualitative research on VAT registration – published on 26 September 2024
• Qualitative research on VAT de-registration – published on 26 September 2024
• Research with customers who struggle to engage with HMRC communications – published on 27 February 2025
• Individuals, Small Businesses and Agents Customer Survey 2023
• The Mid-sized business customer survey 2023

Training

Our Charter sets out the standards and behaviours that customers can expect from us. Colleagues continue to develop skills to deliver the Charter as part of their professional development. For example, during 2024 to 2025 approximately 1,300 trainee compliance caseworkers attended a session on the importance of being responsive to customers. In addition, Customer Service colleagues are upskilled in how to deliver the charter through the Service Excellence Programme. By March 2025, 2,000 team leaders and managers had completed this learning with rollout across Teams due to be completed by December 2025. New recruits will also receive the learning.

In addition to training on the charter, HMRC provide additional training on supporting customers who need extra help. In 2024 to 2025, over 3,700 compliance colleagues received training on how to provide bespoke support to customers with extra support needs and those who are bereaved. In addition, almost 1,200 colleagues have completed a new Empathy Learning Product which helps colleagues cultivate deeper empathy when engaging with customers going through a compliance check, enhancing professionalism, and building customer trust.

We have also launched a compliance professionalism product on decision making and the impact to the customer of delay or an incorrect decision. Regular engagement with professional external bodies also enables compliance caseworkers to directly hear about, and learn from, customer impacts.

We have further enhanced our training offer on supporting customers in vulnerable circumstances through the delivery of safeguarding training and our partnership with the Samaritans. HMRC colleagues can signpost customers, where needed, to a dedicated Samaritans helpline for specialist emotional help. HMRC has also invested in training, delivered by the Samaritans, that equips advisers and caseworkers with the skills and confidence to have supportive conversations with vulnerable people and help them to build confidence in supporting those customers effectively via correspondence. 

To support colleagues to understand our Public Sector Equality Duty obligations, comprehensive resources and training are available providing guidance and advice.  

Assessing the impact of our policies and projects

Assessments of protected characteristic information provide policy and change projects with data and evidence to improve our understanding of the impacts our decisions, policies and procedures have on our customers.

To ensure we consider the effects of new policies on customers, HMRC undertakes customer and equality impacting analysis for all new policies and publishes tax information and impact notes (TIINs). In 2024 to 2025 we published 79 TIINs.

Equality Impact Assessments (EQIA) are also produced in consultation with colleagues who have experience in Equalities analysis. Governance is in place to ensure that all change projects have a completed EQIA in advance of implementation.

To ensure that projects and programmes reflect customer needs and any potential impacts, and have appropriate mitigations in place, we have refreshed our Customer Guardrails. These are the minimum standards which should be adhered to when delivering change.

Support for customers

During 2024 to 2025 we delivered several initiatives to improve our support offer to help customers meet their obligations or receive any benefits or payments they are entitled to:

• Tax-Free Childcare improvements mean that parents are now able to use familiar payment platforms for childcare expenses, making the process more convenient and accessible
• access to the Child Benefit online claim service has been expanded to support a wider range of customers with 87% of claims now being made online
• an enhancement to the Self-Serve Time to Pay service now provides customers with a more convenient experience, reducing the need for direct contact with collectors, through an expansion of the maximum debt level that can be managed online
• the VAT DIY Housebuilders Scheme has been transformed with the introduction of robotic automation which swiftly verifies claims, enhancing efficiency and accuracy
• voice biometric technology for identity verification was piloted, involving up to 3,000 customers, between January and March 2025. This provides customers with an easier and more convenient service within the current verification process. HMRC aims to make voice biometrics available to all eligible customers by December 2025
• we have created a ÌìÃÀÓ°Ôº interactive guidance tool to bring together all relevant guidance so customers can understand how the compliance process works. Engaging closely with external stakeholders and acting on their feedback, we have also improved our communications so when we write to customers about a compliance check, letters are written with more empathy and our communications are easier to understand
• HMRC’s Digital Assistant facilitated over 6 million interactions in 2024 to 2025 and we are looking to improve it further

Support for customers who need extra help

Our Extra Support Teams provide tailored support for customers who need extra help, including those in vulnerable circumstances. We have increased the size of our extra support teams and during 2024 to 2025 over 150,000 customers received extra support.

Types of extra support that we offer include:

• specialist phone and webchat provision with the ability to call customers back where they have complex queries
• the provision of alternative formats for over 59,500 customers during 2024 to 2025, including large print, Braille, audio, and plain text on CD
• scheduled telephone appointments with customers to allow them time to acquire any required documentation
• face to face appointments at the customer’s home, HMRC regional centre office or Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) office

Language services

HMRC has well-established, alternative language services and resources. We engage translators and interpreters for multiple languages, providing our customer-facing colleagues with guidance on how to access these services.

British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters are provided by ‘Big Word’ and can be accessed by customer-facing colleagues or through the Extra Support Team, who will arrange a convenient date and time to contact the customer to discuss their query or to provide additional support. Customers can also contact HMRC using a BSL video interpreter from the ‘Interpreters Live!’ service. Where possible, we encourage customers with language translation needs to ask a family member or friend to support them when they contact HMRC, as part of the Trusted Helper Scheme.

Customers can use our online services in Welsh as well as receiving Welsh language correspondence and customer services. From April 2024 to March 2025, our Welsh Language Unit translated over 2.5 million words into Welsh. Our Welsh language customer service people received more than:

• 18,000 phone calls
• 1,100 emails
• 2,700 items of post from our customers in Welsh and over 7,000 items of post issued to our customers in Welsh
• £2.1 million in telephone payments

In addition, we also had over 338,800 views of our online Welsh language services and more than 26,000 customers have chosen Welsh language in the HMRC App.

To strengthen our Welsh Language offer, Customer Compliance Group have developed an Alternative Language Service offer with particular focus on Welsh Language requirements. This offer aims to improve accessibility and service quality for customers going through a compliance check who prefer to communicate in Welsh.

Digital accessibility

To ensure our digital services are as usable, accessible, and inclusive as possible, we conduct regular research with customers throughout the service design and delivery process. Our research community has several initiatives underway aiming to increase the diversity, equality, and inclusion of our research panel.

We have:

• continued to research our services with users of assistive technology to enable us to better meet disabled customers’ needs, with an increased focus on using data to increase knowledge of users’ barriers
• continued to proactively engage charities and community organisations to gain better insight into our users’ needs as well as recruit more diverse participants for our research
• developed our internal research panel to identify colleagues who have declared access needs. We have also worked with the internal HMRC deaf and hard-of-hearing group to develop guidance on how to run empathetic, inclusive user research sessions
• developed stronger controls around the commercial procurement of software and services for use by HMRC colleagues which consider the accessibility of the solution being procured

Customer complaints

HMRC has a comprehensive customer complaints process available for customers if they are unhappy with the service provided. We have also introduced a new digital complaints route on gov.uk to enable agents to submit their complaint online.

Customers can refer their complaints to the independent Adjudicator’s Office if they are not happy with our response, and the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman if they disagree with the outcome reached by the Adjudicator. 

To improve our customers’ experience we aim to learn from complaints so that we prevent the same problems from re-occurring. For example, we have built a PowerBI Dashboard for complaints relating to compliance activities which allows us to quickly identify trends and make improvements.

Working with external stakeholders and customers

We work with over 100 stakeholder groups to:

• build supportive, trusting, and professional relationships
• ensure that we apply their knowledge and expertise across HMRC to drive continuous improvement

HMRC is very grateful for the continued support from all our stakeholders.

The Individual Stakeholder Forum

°Õ³ó±ðÌýIndividual Stakeholder Forum is our main external consultation forum for the Voluntary and Community Sector organisations that represent individual customers. They help us to understand our diverse customer base. Meetings feature a mix of presentations from HMRC policy and operational colleagues and discussions on topical issues, changes in policy or process, or topics raised by members.

The Additional Needs Working Group

°Õ³ó±ðÌýAdditional Needs Working Group supports and challenges planned changes to ensure that we consider any impacts on customers with additional needs. It also provides HMRC with a forum to constructively exchange ideas about the requirements and concerns of customers with additional needs and our customer-focused equality objectives.

Working with Voluntary and Community Sector organisations

In addition to our engagement work across the sector, HMRC provides funding to some charitable organisations to extend our reach and provide support to customers who might not approach the department directly for assistance. HMRC’s grant funding programme has been established for many years and operates in accordance with Cabinet Office Grant guidelines. The programme is based on a competed exercise to select successful Voluntary and Community Sector partners.

The current 2024 to 2027 grant funding scheme began on 1 April 2024 with 12 organisations, with HMRC providing £5.5 million over the three-year period. We continue to work closely with these organisations to help reach customers who need support and extra help with HMRC’s services and build our customer understanding and insights so these can be designed into future changes in policy and services.

During the first year of the 2024 to 2027 programme, the funded Voluntary and Community Sector organisations helped over 40,000 customers resolve issues and meet their tax obligations through a range of channels, including telephony, email and face-to-face. In addition, HMRC has a three-year commercial contract with the Samaritans to provide training and a specialist helpline for HMRC customers who require specialist emotional support.

Colleague-focused activities

HMRC’s approach to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) is evidence informed. Applicants and colleagues are asked to voluntarily and confidentially record their personal diversity characteristics. That information is collated and anonymised, used to measure progress within HMRC, and to benchmark against other government departments and external organisations.

Employee experience is analysed by all ‘equality protected characteristics’ listed in the Equality Act 2010 (such as disability, race, sexual orientation), plus caring responsibilities and socio-economic background, to identify our biggest challenges. These analyses, layered with our strategic objectives, form our Public Sector Equality Duty Equality Objectives. Priorities are set under each equality objective and progress is reviewed at least annually. Top-down governance and leadership is provided by an Executive Committee level group, called the Workforce and Workplace Steering Group.

A self-serve diversity data tool, which is available to all colleagues, was developed to support colleagues to take a data-driven and outcome focused approach to EDI across the department.

All colleagues are expected to uphold our values and conduct standards in our behaviours and embed equality considerations into our business-as-usual activity. Where work is undertaken specifically to improve equality, there are requirements and support in place to ensure it is legally compliant, strategically aligned, evaluated for impact to ensure value for money for taxpayers.

As an employer, we embed EDI into our policy and processes, our learning and development activities and our communications.

Policies and guidance

In addition to our compliance with the UK employment legislation, we have policies and guidance supporting colleagues to address any behaviours that fall short of our conduct standards; make reasonable adjustments; make documents fully accessible; and assess the equality impact of decisions.  We offer a broad range of flexibilities and support to help colleagues maintain a healthy work/life balance, such as flexible working hours and career breaks. We encourage colleagues to share different perspectives and ideas, such as through our staff diversity networks.

Learning and development

Equality considerations are embedded into all our colleague learning and development opportunities. We offer learning to ensure all colleagues are aware of their rights and responsibilities for equality and are clear on the standards of behaviour expected of all HMRC colleagues.

Communications

We communicate our inclusive culture, celebrate our diversity and actively raise awareness of our EDI priorities. We encourage and inspire colleagues to take regular action to make inclusion an everyday activity, make clear our collective role in delivering our equality objectives and signpost to sources of support. 

Annex: Diversity declaration and representation rates

The following tables show the diversity of HMRC’s workforce, as of 31 March 2025. The tables show anonymised and aggregated colleague data. Any data that could potentially identify an individual is suppressed. 

Diversity data is voluntarily self-declared by colleagues. The ‘known’ representation rate reflects the proportion of colleagues identifying as having a particular diversity characteristic, as a proportion of all colleagues who have recorded a status for that characteristic. Percentages exclude colleagues that have declared that they do not wish to record that characteristic and colleagues that have not provided any information.  The ‘declaration rate’ is the percentage of all colleagues that recorded something against that characteristic, including ‘choose not to declare’.

The data labels used in the tables reflect the administrative categories of employees rather than self-defined language.

All figures are rounded to the nearest %.

Table A: Representation and declaration rates: Disability

Grade	Disabled	Non-disabled	Chose not to declare	Not known	Known disabled	Disability declaration
HMRC overall	10%	60%	5%	25%	14%	75%
SCS	6%	79%	4%	11%	7%	89%
G6	9%	73%	6%	12%	11%	88%
G7	11%	68%	6%	16%	14%	84%
SO	10%	67%	5%	18%	13%	82%
HO	10%	62%	5%	23%	14%	77%
O	9%	60%	4%	27%	14%	73%
AO	10%	50%	4%	36%	17%	64%
AA	15%	48%	4%	33%	24%	67%

Table B: Representation and declaration rates: ethnicity

Grade	Ethnic minority	White	Chose not to declare	Not known	Known ethnic minority	Ethnicity declaration
HMRC overall	16%	61%	3%	20%	21%	81%
SCS	9%	78%	3%	10%	11%	90%
G6	10%	77%	5%	9%	12%	91%
G7	12%	72%	4%	11%	15%	89%
SO	13%	70%	4%	12%	16%	88%
HO	17%	62%	4%	17%	22%	83%
O	19%	58%	3%	21%	25%	79%
AO	16%	52%	2%	29%	24%	71%
AA	6%	67%	4%	23%	9%	77%

Table C: Representation and declaration rates: religion or belief

Grade	Declared religion	No religion or belief	Chose not to declare	Not assigned	Religion or belief declaration rate
HMRC overall	36%	26%	7%	31%	69%
SCS	39%	37%	8%	16%	84%
G6	41%	33%	9%	17%	83%
G7	39%	32%	9%	20%	80%
SO	40%	29%	8%	23%	77%
HO	37%	27%	8%	28%	72%
O	36%	25%	6%	32%	68%
AO	32%	20%	5%	43%	57%
AA	32%	9%	5%	54%	46%

Table D: Representation and declaration rates: sexual orientation

Grade	Lesbian, gay, bisexual and other (note 1)	Heterosexual	Chose not to declare	Not known	Sexual orientation declaration
HMRC overall	5%	61%	7%	28%	72%
SCS	6%	74%	7%	13%	87%
G6	5%	74%	8%	13%	87%
G7	5%	70%	8%	17%	83%
SO	4%	69%	7%	19%	81%
HO	5%	64%	7%	24%	76%
O	5%	60%	6%	29%	71%
AO	5%	50%	6%	39%	61%
AA	2%	44%	7%	47%	53%

Note 1

‘Lesbian, gay, bisexual and other’ includes people who categorised their sexual orientation as gay man, gay woman/lesbian, bisexual or ‘other’.

Table E: Representation: sex

Grade	Female	Male
HMRC overall	52%	48%
SCS	44%	56%
G6	45%	55%
G7	47%	53%
SO	50%	50%
HO	49%	51%
O	52%	48%
AO	58%	42%
AA	66%	34%

Note 2

Data on sex is recorded at the point of employment for all colleagues, so the declaration rate is 100%.