HMRC has set out further progress on its digital transformation roadmap, with 5.6 million taxpayers using the HMRC app to check their pay nearly 100 million times during the 2025 to 2026 tax year.
The figures show how digital tax services are becoming part of routine financial administration for individuals, employers, accountants, and payroll teams. Through the app, users can check pay before payday, access National Insurance numbers, review tax codes, view income and benefits, make Self Assessment payments, track letters, and receive tax estimates.
The department said 2.8 million people began using the app during the year, taking total unique users to 7.6 million. Nearly 20 million people now use the Personal Tax Account, while 78% of customer interactions take place digitally. HMRC’s ambition is for at least 90% of customer interactions to be digital by 2030.
Paper is being reduced at the same time. HMRC said the number of letters issued to customers had fallen by 15 million over the past three years, while call waiting times had almost halved over two years to an average of around 12 and a half minutes.
The department’s roadmap points to a tax administration model based on apps, online accounts, automated prompts, and live data, with fewer routine tasks handled through post or phone support. That has operational consequences across payroll, accountancy, tax advice, identity management, and compliance.
Practices have already been preparing for tighter digital access requirements after HMRC set an agent multi-factor authentication timetable, with final activation due between late September and mid-October 2026. The latest roadmap reinforces the same direction: security, digital identity, and account access are becoming central parts of tax administration.
Digital tax is no longer confined to filing software or year-end submissions. It is increasingly a continuous layer of administration, touching payroll records, benefits reporting, tax-code accuracy, payment behaviour, customer messages, and compliance checks. As more taxpayers can see their data in near real time, errors in employer submissions or HMRC records may surface more quickly.
That visibility may reduce some uncertainty, but it can also increase the volume of questions reaching payroll and finance teams. Employees who spot tax-code changes, benefit entries, or income discrepancies before payday may go to employers before HMRC. Organisations with fragmented payroll data, slow correction processes, or unclear internal ownership could face more avoidable queries.
Making Tax Digital sits behind much of the wider change. The programme is designed to bring more taxpayers and businesses into regular digital record-keeping and submission cycles. Software adoption is only one part of that transition. Reliable source data, trained staff, clear authorisations, and secure access controls are just as important.
Digital channels also raise expectations around service quality. A better app experience can reduce pressure on helplines, but it places more responsibility on users and intermediaries to understand prompts, keep credentials secure, and respond to online notices. When customers lose access, miss a digital message, or misunderstand a tax estimate, support still has to be available.
Digital exclusion remains a policy constraint. HMRC’s target for 90% of interactions to be digital by 2030 leaves a significant minority who may need assisted services because of age, disability, language barriers, low digital confidence, or limited access to secure devices. A more efficient tax authority still needs routes that work for those who cannot rely entirely on apps and online accounts.
The compliance dimension is also becoming more pronounced. As HMRC works with more digital information, it gains greater capacity to identify mismatches, prompt customers, and target non-compliance. That can improve collection and reduce manual intervention, but it also depends on data quality across employers, advisers, software providers, and taxpayers.
Cyber resilience will remain a central concern. Tax accounts hold sensitive personal and financial information, while agent accounts can provide access to large numbers of clients. As more activity takes place digitally, compromised credentials, weak authentication, and poor internal access management can create risk well beyond a single taxpayer record.
The roadmap shows HMRC trying to combine efficiency, compliance, and customer service through digital infrastructure. The organisations best prepared for that environment will be those treating tax data quality, secure access, and payroll accuracy as day-to-day controls, rather than administrative tasks dealt with after problems appear.
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