HM Revenue and Customs has made a rapid U-turn on a decision to close its self-assessment telephone helpline for six months.

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The Revenue said earlier this week that the line would be closed between April and September, with taxpayers directed to online services instead.

In less than 24 hours prior to announcing the 6 month closure HMRC chief, Jim Harry announcing the Revenue’s decision to reverse the closure, says: “The pace of this change needs to match the public appetite for managing their tax affairs online.

“We've listened to the feedback and we're halting the helpline changes as we recognise more needs to be done to ensure all taxpayers' needs are met, whilst also encouraging them to transition to online services."

HMRC deals with more than 12 million completed self-assessment forms per annum of which hundreds of thousands are from landlords and it receives massive amounts of telephone calls for assistance.

However HMRC also wanted to introduce reductions to other help lines including the VAT Helpline being open for just five business days every month prior to the deadline for completed VAT returns and refusing to accept any calls about PAYE refunds on its helpline.

Having seen the light it has also decided against doing so.

The Commons all-party Treasury Committee  had heavily criticised HMRC’s decision to reduce help lines activity and applauded its ‘change of heart’ in its statement saying: “While we do not oppose expansion of digital services for those who want to use them, we remain entirely unconvinced that HMRC is adequately prepared to impose such a significant change in how it serves taxpayers.

"Planned changes to the operation of HMRC's phone lines have been mismanaged from the beginning. Questions still remain over the extent to which the department are prioritising its own needs over those of law-abiding and vulnerable taxpayers."

Some MPs on the Public Accounts Committee in February heavily criticised the HMRC’s abysmal customer service as being at an all-time low with around two thirds of taxpayers seeking help having to wait for more than ten minutes to speak to one of its helpline advisers.

The committee’s report stated the average wait to speak to a HMRC adviser in the twelve months up to April 2023 was 16 minutes and 24 seconds in the year to April 2023, which was four minutes longer than the previous year’s average of 12 minutes and 22 seconds.