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On Monday, HMRC released their long awaited transformation roadmap. This sits at the heart of the UK Government’s plans to digitise the tax system and provide better support for small businesses. The roadmap follows the 2025 Spring Statement, where the government committed to publishing a transformation roadmap setting out the future direction of the tax and customs system. 

You can read the full transformation roadmap here. 

Within the Strategy, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury and Chair of the HMRC Board outlined three priorities, including:  

• Improving the day-to-day performance and customer experience 
• Closing the tax gap 
• Driving reform and modernisation of the UK’s tax and customs system. 

Overall, we are pleased to see that the roadmap echoes techUK sentiment that HMRC must improve its digital service to improve delivery and close the tax gap. Within our Spending Review submission, we recommended that HMRC focus resources on enhancing current digital services and delivering key digital economy programmes such as MTD and e-invoicing. Digitisation should streamline tax management for businesses, reducing administrative burden for both businesses and HMRC while accelerating processes. 

A particular area techUK are pleased to see is the use of operational sandboxes, taking learnings from the private sector, to support and identify HMRC’s delivery and promotion of digital services – along with next steps for GOV.UK One Login. 

Hidden in the roadmap is the government outlining its plans to scrap MTD for Corporation Tax. This has not come as a surprise given Corporation Tax submissions are already fully electronic. We understand HMRC will work with stakeholders to identify changes and will consult and provide early clarity and assurance on both the design and timing of changes. 

A few key announcements include: 

Improving day-to-day performance and customer experience 

• The department will become a digital-first organisation with a minimum of 90% of interactions undertaken digitally by 2029 to 2030 – increasing from around 76% currently. 
• Begin work in 2025 to 2026 to introduce a new customer relationship management system which will enable more personalised support for customers and their advisers. 
• The rollout of the voice biometrics pilot to make customer verification easier when calling HMRC’s helplines will be extended in 2025/26. 
• Investing in AI-powered digital assistants – HMRC’s digital assistant (Ask HMRC Online) provides digital support to customers who are viewing HMRC guidance pages. 

Closing the tax gap 

•  Greater use of AI analytical tools to assess risks and to provide automated nudges, aiming to help customers pay what they owe. 
• Publishing a roadmap setting out HMRC’s approach to software in the tax system by April 2026. 
• Extra investment for 5,500 new compliance officers over the next 5 years. 

Reform and modernisation of the tax and customs system 

• Over the Spending Review period, HMRC will overhaul its legacy IT infrastructure and invest in AI, data capabilities and new platforms that increase the security and efficiency of operations; provide an improved picture of a customer’s tax affairs and compliance risks closer to real-time. Investing in legacy IT infrastructure was a key ask of techUK within our Spending Review submisson. 
• To improve services, working with other UK government departments and devolved bodies to share data and trial processes.  
• Development of new AI assistants for GOV.UK guidance and a credentials sharing pilot with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 
• Planned AI tools for HMRC staff to automate and streamline administrative tasks, with the ability to spend more time on compliance casework and customer service. 

A future vision for the tax and customs system 

HMRC wants to accelerate the benefits of several key trends that enable automation, including integrating tax and business systems; AI enabled products; AI tools and Open Banking. 

Measures outlined include: 

• Continue exploring emerging innovations in payments and finance infrastructure, such as improvements to accounting software which integrate into systems that customers already use. 
• Plans to increase and expand use of AI to target compliance activity, guide customers to the right advice, follow up on the minority that have not paid the right tax, and empower colleagues to work more effectively. 
• Making use of machine learning and Generative AI to streamline administrative tasks such as summarising customer calls.  

For small businesses 

• Tax education support packages focused on small businesses and pensioners will be introduced in 2025/26. HMRC will also launch a tax module aimed at students in higher education “to support the UK’s entrepreneurs of the future”. 
• HMRC will expand the use of e-invoicing to help reduce error and lower small business tax administration. 
• Pre-populating Self Assessment tax returns with Child Benefit data from April 2026. 
• Digitising the Inheritance Tax service from tax year 2027 to 2028. 
• Developing a new AI service for the Online Trade Tariff to provide bespoke support to importers and exporters. 

Key points on digital identification: 

As part of the future vision for the tax and customs system, the transformation roadmap confirms that the government is transitioning to GOV.UK One Login as a single sign-in and identity checking solution for citizens to access government digital services.  

• The way customers register and authenticate to use digital services will be simplified through GOV.UK One Login – this is a single sign-in and identity checking solution that will provide a simple route for customers to access government services.  
• HMRC will transition its customers (individuals, agents and organisations) from Government Gateway to GOV.UK One Login in stages with an aim to start onboarding to GOV.UK One Login towards the end of 2026 to 2027. 
• Ambition to create a linked Digital Wallet that will allow users to store and share government ID documents as well as confirm ID attributes, such as age, to access private sector services.  
• HMRC will be play a more active role to support digital ID initiatives and explore further how digital ID models supported by data and tech improvements can benefit the tax and customs union. Sustomer ability to use credentials in the Wallet across multiple sectors – for example, Sweden’s BankID allows citizens to access both government and banking services. 
• Improved cross jurisdiction collaboration and information sharing facilitated by cross border identity recognition frameworks – for example, the EU uses Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services (eIDAS) 
• The question now is how HMRC is going to roll this out and consultations that may be released to feed into this.  

For this transformation roadmap to be successful, HMRC must work in close collaboration and partnership with the tech sector to facilitate the development of a more automated tax and customs system, along with ensuring that the customer service delivery provided supports the tech sector to thrive and play its part in increasing economic growth.  

techUK, on behalf of our members, look forward to continuing to feed into HMRC and informing the delivery of this transformation roadmap.