As we plan the transition from the HMRC website to GOV.UK, the first thing we need to do is build a clear understanding of the needs of various users for this content and to create design principles that will help us meet those needs.
One of the biggest challenges we face when designing for the needs of HMRC’s users is the sheer scale. Our design research must take in the needs of almost every citizen, a potentially enormous undertaking.
So our first task has been building a user landscape map. This is a simple document that brings together what we know about the number of potential different users of the service.
By collating information from the HMRC research reports as well as other sources, we’ve identified 8 different high-level types of users, each with several sub-groups.
Individuals
The largest of these groups is Individual citizens (there are some 29 million individual taxpayers served by HMRC). Of these a significant amount pay tax at source through PAYE and are likely to have simpler tax information needs.
There are however approximately 9 million people who pay tax through Self Assessment and these people will have more complicated tax content needs. Six million of HMRC’s users are of State Pension age and again have different requirements from those currently in work. And of course there are different tax bands, which will also play a part in defining needs.
Whilst research on this area is less confident, an estimated 2.1 million people participate in what is known as the hidden economy, either operating unregistered businesses or simply invisible to the system in other ways.
Business
A great many of the UK’s businesses are very small enterprises, which brings unique challenges as business owners may not have access to sophisticated tax services. Of the 4.8 million SMEs (small to medium enterprises) in the UK, defined as less than 250 employees, 3.5 million of them are sole traders without any employees.
Another million have less than 10 employees. Businesses operating at very different scales will mean different people, in different roles, and with very different levels of tax experience and knowledge using the service.
These businesses are also structured in a number of different ways and pay tax in a number of different ways, including Self Assessment, Corporation Tax, VAT and a number of other taxes or duties for specific industries. The nation’s 13,000 charities are the last of the organisational entities using HMRC’s services.
Tax professionals
There are some 43 thousand agents performing paid tax services for UK citizens, and HMRC estimates an additional 80 thousand that are informal agents. Over and above this there are numerous other tax industry professionals including advisors, solicitors and publishers who make use of HMRC’s content. Finally, there is HMRC itself.
What’s next?
Our next steps are to begin working with users from each of these groups to understand their needs and test our ideas and designs as the project gains momentum.
If you’re reading this and think you fit into one of the groups we’ve sketched out above (or a different one we haven’t considered yet) we’d love to hear from you, so get in touch.
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