Another HMRC issue. Why aren't we suprised.....?

We were astonished to see in the latest edition of a newsletter from one of our professional contacts that HMRC have closed some phone lines to deal with a backlog of post. VAT and Corporation Tax lines have been closed for one day this month and will be closed for a further two days during December, so call centre staff can switch to mail opening duty.

The backlog is so severe that if you wrote to HMRC last week, you can expect a reply by June 23rd 2022.
The tax office have said it is looking to address this and aims to be back to pre-pandemic levels by April.

HMRC’s performance update for March 2020, showed that 70% of post was dealt within 15 days of receipt and 87% within 40 days, both of which were behind their target response times.