ABAB reports record response to survey

The Administrative Burdens Advisory Board (ABAB) has released its 'Tell ABAB report 2025 to 2026'. The report found rising concern about legislative burden, continued difficulties with communication channels and an improved perception of Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax.

The Administrative Burdens Advisory Board (ABAB) represents the small business community and provides research for HMRC on their policies and procedures. For small businesses, it aims to:

• Help to reduce administrative burdens.
• Ensure that the tax system is easier, quicker and simpler to use.

This year the ABAB's findings of note include:

• Respondents reported more positive perceptions of Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax, with an increasing proportion indicating that it would have little or no impact on their business. There remain several continuing challenges, with some respondents:
  • Remaining concerned about costs, time commitments and practical implications.
  • Seeing no benefit to the introduction of these measures.
• Difficulties accessing HMRC support, navigating guidance and understanding HMRC communications continue to contribute to administrative burden for small businesses.
• Taxpayers want more services available online, while improvements are still needed across telephone and webchat services. Satisfaction with the HMRC App improved, with fewer respondents rating the service poorly.

Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax

From April 2026, landlords and sole traders with turnover over £50,000 were required to keep records digitally and provide quarterly updates of income and expenditure using MTD-compatible software.

Respondents reported that MTD for Income Tax was expected to have less impact on cost and time than they reported in 2025. This year, 43% reported that MTD would have no significant effects compared with 27% in 2025.

Despite this, responses from those who believe MTD will increase cost and time remain high:

The vast majority of respondents (60.1%) reported that there are no benefits to MTD for Income Tax, which is broadly in line with the predictions reported in 2025 (65.2%):

The survey was carried out before the first filing deadline for those mandated to use MTD for Income Tax from April 2026.

HMRC will deliver real-time digital prompts via MTD-compatible software (if selected by the user) to remind taxpayers to check the figures entered in their software.

• Around one third of respondents had heard of digital prompts and just over half of those said that they made it simpler to comply with tax requirements.

There was a 2% increase in respondents who employed an accountant/agent/bookkeeper to keep their day-to-day business records compared with 2025.

HMRC communications and guidance

Survey respondents were asked to rate the usefulness of various channels of communication with HMRC.

• Satisfaction levels for telephone and webchat services have gradually increased, although they still get mixed feedback.
• Across all services, except for the HMRC app, the largest group of respondents continued to rate usefulness as ‘poor’.
• The largest group of respondents for the HMRC App service rated this as ‘average’.

• Customer experience
  • The majority of respondents said their experience with HMRC during the last 12 months had not changed.
    • 6.0% remarked that their customer experience had improved.
    • 31.4% remarked that it had worsened.
    • 62.6% remarked it had stayed the same.
  • Many survey recipients suggested that all HMRC’s processes should be made available online.

• Legislative burden and impact
  • 61.6% of respondents said that the legislative burden for tax compliance had worsened during the last 12 months.
  • 36.0% felt it had stayed the same.
  • 2.4% thought it had improved.
  • 62.8% of respondents felt they had been impacted by legislative changes in tax compliance during the last 12 months.

• Helpline response times
  • 47.2% of respondents said response times for HMRC helplines were poor. This improved by 8.3% from 2025.
  • 19.0% answered that response times were bad.
  • By comparison, only 3.9% of respondents rated the response times as very good.

• YouTube
  • 29.6% of the survey’s respondents had watched HMRC’s YouTube videos. Of those who had seen the YouTube videos:
    • 43.5% said they found them through HMRC communications.
    • 33.4% from GOV.UK.
    • 17.5% discovered them through Google.
    • 2.8% were referred by a friend or associate.
  •  46.1% rated HMRC YouTube videos as ‘good’ and 35.3% rated them as ‘average’.

• Accessibility and helpfulness of HMRC guidance
  • The majority of respondents reported that they found information to help with their business tax affairs on GOV.UK, through their accountant or financial advisor and within their tax software.
    • This question also had a free text response option, which was dominated by those using generative AI tools.
  • 31.3% felt that HMRC guidance was helpful.
  • 31.5% voted that HMRC guidance was average.
  • 14.4% considered that HMRC guidance was unhelpful.
  • Of those who had started a business in the last 12 months, 72% of respondents reported that GOV.UK guidance did not help them complete their task (an increase from 56.6% in 2025).

• Written correspondence
  • 6.3% of respondents answered ‘easy’ when asked how easy it was to read any HMRC written correspondence received in the last 12 months, with 3.2% finding it ‘very easy’.
    • This question was only answered by 20% of total respondents, as it was only applicable to those who had received written correspondence during the year.
  • 4.9% answered that it was ‘neither easy nor difficult’.
  • 3.6% answered that it was ‘difficult’, while 1.7% found it ‘very difficult’ to read.
  • Similarly, the majority of respondents reported that correspondence was ‘easy’ to understand and act on.
  • Businesses were more positive than agents about HMRC correspondence.
  • When asked about specific changes that HMRC could make to improve correspondence, respondents mentioned removing jargon, reducing delays in responding to taxpayer letters, improving the accuracy of data and making next steps clearer.
    • There was a strong demand from taxpayers and agents for the option to reply to HMRC digitally.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  • The use of generative AI for tax queries continued to rise. 32.4% reported having used a generative AI system such as ChatGPT or Copilot to seek an answer to a tax query, an increase of 10.9% on 2025.
  • Of those, 61.1% felt they received an answer that resolved their query, although 7.2% of those then reported that the answer was, in fact, not reliable.

• Business and Personal Tax Accounts
  • The use of these accounts had dropped with 53.5% of respondents saying that they had used the Business Tax Account (65.8% in 2025) and 64.1% having used the Personal Tax Account (70.7% in 2025).
  • Reasons for not using the Business and Personal Tax Accounts included login or access issues, lack of awareness of the accounts, reliance on an accountant and lack of digital capability.
  • Most respondents reported no effect on the business tax administration burden from the use of either service.

• Registering for tax
  • 49.7% of the survey’s respondents found it neither easy nor difficult to set up a business and register for taxes using HMRC’s services.
  • 24.9% found it ‘easy’ or ‘very easy’.
  • 25.4% found it ‘difficult’ or ‘very difficult’.
  • When asked which areas HMRC needed to improve most, support when something goes wrong and finding clear guidance on what registrations are required were the most popular answers.
• QR codes
  • Only 7.6% of survey respondents had used the QR code on the HMRC online payment section.

This year’s Tell ABAB Survey ran from 15 April 2026 to 29 April 2026 and had a record 10,195 responses, up from 3,146 last year. 88% of responses came from businesses and 12% from agents, with 82.3% of respondents being over the age of 45.

The largest single group of agent respondents (29%) had 25 or fewer clients. In total, 57% of agents who responded had 100 clients or less.

Useful guides on this topic

MTD: Toolkit for accountants
What is the current timetable for Making Tax Digital (MTD)? When will MTD for Income Tax become mandatory? How will it work? Which clients will be excluded? What planning needs to be undertaken?  

Compare software for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax
What software is available for MTD for Income Tax? What's the most suitable software I can use? Which software does HMRC list as working for MTD for Income Tax? What to consider before choosing software? 

Personal Tax Account
What is a Personal Tax Account? How do I get one? What can I do with it?

External link

Tell ABAB report 2025 to 2026