HMRC officials would be fined and dismissed if they keep taxpayers waiting too long to deal with government services under a Reform UK government, under a new policy designed to help small business owners.

If Nigel Farage becomes Prime Minister, customer services officers at the tax collector would have their pay tied to performance levels and would be required to keep waiting times below 30 minutes. Linking individual pay and job security to call-waiting targets would mark a sharp break with Whitehall practice, where performance-related progression is limited and most HMRC pay is set through collective bargaining — arrangements that civil service unions, including the PCS which represents many tax office workers, have long resisted.

Taxpayers and those running businesses would receive a £30 tax credit at the end of the year if they waited for over 30 minutes on the phone to HMRC, the party said. HMRC is one of the biggest employers in the public sector, with 70,000 staff.

The party's Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick said the policy pushing tax officials to improve performance levels would "restore basic fairness" in the overall system.

Reform cited research suggesting that 50,000 calls were ended by HMRC without help being delivered to taxpayers, as call times exceeded 70 minutes. Officials also pointed to employment figures suggesting that a loss of 14m hours of taxpayers' time on HMRC lines had cost the UK economy around £275m in lost productivity.

Long waits at the tax authority predate the pledge. HMRC's own published service statistics show phone answer rates falling short of its standards in recent years, and MPs on the Treasury Select Committee have repeatedly pressed the department over deteriorating helpline performance. In 2023, HMRC abandoned within days a plan to close its self-assessment helpline for most of the summer after a backlash, as it steered more taxpayers towards its app and online services.

HMRC crackdown and 'crony capitalism'

Reform has rolled out a heap of policies aimed at easing regulatory costs for small businesses in recent months, including the replacement of GDPR with a more "light-touch" personal data protection regime and raising the VAT threshold to £150,000 — a pitch to a group that bodies such as the Federation of Small Businesses say loses significant time to tax administration. The push comes with the party riding high in national polls after winning hundreds of council seats in May's local elections.

However, senior party figures have recently come into a collision course with large UK businesses over migration controls. Zia Yusuf, the home affairs spokesman, has hit out at Serco, Deliveroo and Vodafone over asylum hotels, illegal migrants' work and sim cards being given to people who crossed the Channel on small boats.

On Wednesday, Jenrick doubled down on criticism of larger companies that "exploit the taxpayer". Asked whether larger businesses would be targeted, he said the party did not believe in "crony capitalism", adding that companies would find "life very tough under a Reform government" if they employ illegal workers.

He also backed the party's pledge to crack down on poor performance at HMRC, saying: "We're just asking them to do their jobs." The announcement did not detail how the £30 credit would be verified against phone records, or how fines on officials would operate alongside existing civil service procedures for managing poor performance.

Reform will hold its party conference on the first weekend of September in Birmingham, where it will hold its first ever designated "business day" to engage with industry chiefs. Jenrick promised that it would be the "most impressive business day" hosted by any political party at upcoming conferences.