PAYE Tax account

Overview

The objective was to improve the PAYE tax account service so that users could better self-serve. It was hoped these improvements would lead to a reduction in offline PAYE support requests being made by users.

PAYE data such as tax codes and employment history were not available on the existing service, which led many users to contact the support team. As witnessed in user testing, the service was also difficult to navigate and the information architecture was poor.  In essence, the service was not fit for purpose and explained why many users preferred to contact HMRC. 

During the project’s discovery phase, I spent time with the support team listening to calls from users. Some of the most common requests were users wanting to know their current year tax code and requested a copy of their employment history. 

PAYE Employment history can be used as evidence for job applications, mortgage and visa applications. HMRC would send up to 5 years of employment history to the user by post after a request was made. This was an expensive process for HMRC and unnecessary if the information was available on the PAYE account for the user to access 

We ran user testing sessions to identify gaps, pain points and gather insights on the existing PAYE service.

Using the insights gathered during the discovery phase we ran a problem framing session with the project’s key stakeholders. This session helped the team align on the specific problem we were trying to solve and also agree on what features we would deliver for MVP. 

After we defined the problem statements, the UCD team created a series of how-might-we statements. These helped us brainstorm ideas, which led to the initial design concepts.

These concepts were designed and tested with users using the Gov prototyping toolkit. This approach enabled us to test and iterate quickly, before these features were moved into development. 

What was delivered

• An employment history page. Where users can download or print up to 5 years of their employment history
• The introduction of the current year tax code
• A redesigned PAYE account dashboard and navigation that clearly surfaced the user top tasks such as: tax codes and employment history.
• Improved content, such as the addition of contextual copy to explain complex PAYE terminology