Watch out UK taxpayers: 28,000 HMRC staffers just got an AI copilot HMRC is betting big on Microsoft Copilot, rolling it out to tens of thousands of staff after a Whitehall trial estimated it saved each user roughly 26 minutes of time per day. The department has dished out about 28,000 Microsoft Copilot licenses and is preparing to switch on agentic-style features, with chief AI officer James …
OK, seeing that "john doe" is claiming for these, that and the other benefits while claiming to be unable to move etc, then a few snaps on whatever social showing "john doe" skiing, paragliding, etc - fine and I can see it is useful, but other info... leave me alone. As the article says you can find conflicting information on various subjects or policies on their own sites.
Of course the people using it say it saved *them* time. How many gave wrong advice and so wasted the time and money of people who needed accurate advice ? How many customers had to ring back or file appeals that wouldn't have been needed ? A single occurrence wipes out all the time savings.
I can see some value since most of the routine processing went from casework to computer generated work lists. I worked at HMRC during one such transition and spotted the weakness which I've since used to my advantage.
If you are legally required to notify them of a change which, if acted on, will work to your disadvantage, write to them about it. Don't just send one letter, send three or four about it, each of which gives half the story and preferably a lot of irrelevant distractions as well. Each letter should tell a different, partially overlapping half of the story such you need to consider them all together to reach a full understanding of the situation.
That will never happen, each letter will be considered in isolation, but if what you are trying to hide is later discovered you can truthfully tell them you have told them about it and any losses will be chalked down to official error.
The problem is if you do have an LLM that can quickly review the entirety of your correspondence it may well be able to piece together the full jigsaw from the fragments you have given.
It can take them up to 18 months to reply to a physical letter … that is probably your best hope.
They also have a joker of as a Crown organisation, they are not subject to Royal Mail Postal Regulations ‘Signed For’ obligations … so can just fucking lie about when mail was received and after an 18 month wait just summarily fuck you over saying ‘you did not reply within the statutory 2 weeks response time. So we will not proceed with your refund claim’.
Cunts.
"Official Error"?
This must be a Governmental department I have hitherto not heard of, astonishing.
Personally, in all dealings in the last decade with any Governmental deparment - local to national - the prevailing dogma has been that it is impossible for an Official Error to occur, and where there is a discrepancy the error is mine, and the onus is on me to make restitution behind veiled threats of Fraud being levelled.
Indeed, presented with absolute proof of error, the default is to deny any paper trail, legislation, or otherwise even exists and to double down on threats of legal action - incontrovertable proof is no longer a concept when everything can be denied with impunity.
It has become so prevalent that I cannot but believe it is policy. The idea that I could somehow sway a Governmental department through force of logic into admitting error has become risible.
The only potential recourse is a Court of Law, which as we know is open to all, much like the Ritz Hotel. Indeed in some particular cases Law is merely an inconvenience and legislation can be, and as has been altered post-facto to their favour.
"Of course the people using it say it saved *them* time."
And those that weren't using AI reported that those that were took longer... Looks like manglement just picked the answer they thought ministers wanted to hear.
If sloppy, contradictory, self-reported subjective feelings and question-begging "analysis" are an example of gov's "evidence-based approach", then there is no hope.
Jobsworths at HMRC will be more like: "hmm, this company landed that government contract, the CEO's Instagram shows a new Bentley, but DVLA shows no registered owner. The Bentley at his residence is owned by a Cayman corporation. The residence is held through a Jersey company of which he is, conveniently, not a shareholder. Right, nothing to see here. Back to Jane, who didn't declare the four pairs of trainers she sold on Vinted."
HMRC "AI" Agent persued Winston Churchill's Estate for unpaid taxes, dating back to 1915, relentlessly....
Or, of course, insert your wildest, most absurd reality, and that, is likely what we'll see off the back of this at some point.
"Must be true Compooter sez so!
Now, peasant, sell a kidney for this insane bill we've just dreamt up!
Yours Sincerely,
Mr Colin O'Pilot
(C.O'Pilot- Head of HMRC Collections)"
>” HMRC "AI" Agent persued Winston Churchill's Estate for unpaid taxes, dating back to 1915, relentlessly....”
That will be fun, as the question will be which Winston Churchill, given records show 17… plus the more famous one was for legal purposes Winston Spencer-Churchill….
Not really.
HMRC can pursue unpaid tax for anywhere between 4 and 20 years, depending on the behavior that led to the tax loss.
4 Years (Innocent Error): The standard time limit if you took reasonable care but made a mistake.
6 Years (Carelessness): Applies if the tax was lost due to "careless" behavior (negligence) by you or your agent.
12 Years (Offshore Matters): Applies to income tax, capital gains tax, or inheritance tax involving offshore funds, even if reasonable care was taken.
20 Years (Deliberate Behaviour): Applies if you deliberately evaded tax or failed to notify HMRC of a liability.
chief AI officer James Mitton pitching a future where HMRC becomes "the most AI-enabled tax authority on the planet."
God help us because HMRC are already sufficiently crap and error prone without the assistance of AI.
I was recently put on an 'emergency tax code' due to a glitch in the HMRC system. This took me almost 3 months to sort out including no less than 5 phone calls, each time on hold for between 20 and 45 minutes.
We are fcuked.
My mother worked for numerous years as an agency Care Assistant, a job I later joined her in doing.
The entire time she was on an emergency tax code. Every year, promises to sort it out. Every year, it was indeed sorted out...by a slightly ever so different emergency tax code. I, on the other hand, was coded normally.
And one year they sent her a nasty final notice for payment for minus several hundred quid - in other words money they owed her due to the tax coding.
This was the turn of the millennium, so I can only imagine they're worse these days, and throwing AI into the mix...... yeah, you're fcuked.
In forlorn hopes of trying to understand what, if anything, this AI is good for, I've been watching some videos. The other day I came across a killer. Someone got an AI agent on his PC to use the windows calc app to add 2 and 2, copy the result, and then paste it into notepad. I wish I was making that up, but I'm not.
I’m not sure I want to know what the banking sector is doing with AI, but cash under the mattress is starting to look like a wise idea.
I’ve already upped the amount of cash I keep around the house to be enough for a few big shops, a few months of food.
As for HMRC, given there is very little intelligence there already, AI may actually improve matters, assuming it isn’t “learning” by ingesting garbage data and work practices.
But 26 minutes saved per day? goodness, that is a rather suspect exact figure, isn’t it?
> But 26 minutes saved per day? goodness, that is a rather suspect exact figure, isn’t it?
It's psychological. 25 minutes is one of those values you use in place of "no time at all" but 26 has enough precision to add an air of "we did some calculating and didn't pull a figure out of our arse" (or: we found it this time!)
24 would not be enough.
I'd guess that staff understand they're under significant pressure to present positive findings for AI (Microsoft were never good at subtle) and 25-ish minutes is as much as they're willing to say they can pretend to shave off the time they spend pretending to work. Massage the final result so you don't end up with literally 25 and here we are.
“Mitton, for his part, is keen to stress this isn't HMRC's first brush with AI. The department claims around £8 billion in benefits from earlier automation efforts used to close the tax gap, treating Copilot as a bolt-on to current systems, not a rethink.”
I’m more interested in the £8bn claimed by the IT Chief.
On what ?
It’s not just gov.uk, it’s ALL AI systems. An AI system is wholly dependent upon its training data and the algorithms it uses to trawl through that data. Good training data and evaluation algorithms arise from well curated and activiely maintained data sets. This is a job only experts in the subject matter can do, making it something that really needs to be done in-house and on-shore and will take considerable time…
HMRC and no doubt links to other departments like DVLA, FCA, Benefits Agency, Passport Agency/UK Border Force …. All known for ‘good data’…. Like trying to fit up parents who flew out of the UK on aircraft with Child Benedit fraud.
So, HMRC frozey tax code. Why? No idea. I submit a tax return every year to be correct, but recently that correctness has cost me lots (five figures) because they can't routinely change the tax code like they used to.
So, payment plan was needed (sigh), and the next thin that happens is I get a penalty that says reply in 30 days. But the payment plan is for 6 months and agreed with you...
Called up and told to ignore those messages for an extra £200+. After a few days I decide to follow the letter of the letter and appealed, online.
Then wait.... And wait... And wait.. And check the HMRC App, but nothing.
A *letter* comes in the post. Any digital copy? Nope. None whatsoever. God hell us if we were on holiday and needed that letter to reply to somethong. Just getting it all online *and on paper* as needed would be fine.
Adding Artificial incompetence in won't be a good idea
