Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make an estimate of the average time HM Revenue and Customs takes to issue tax refunds.

HMRC covers a wide range of taxes where refunds may be made. These include, for example, Income Tax (both Pay As You Earn and Self Assessment), Corporation Tax, Stamp Duty Land Tax, Value Added Tax (with a number of different regimes in use), Inheritance Tax and Capital Gains Tax, amongst others.

The speed of repayment, and our service level agreements (SLAs) for speed of repayment, will vary across these different areas, making it impossible to provide an estimate covering all tax refunds.

For example, HMRC has an SLA of 15 days to issue the majority of Self Assessment repayments, and for Corporation Tax repayments due to loss carry back the SLA is 40 working days. HMRC is currently meeting both those SLAs. HMRC publish how they are performing against their service level agreements here: https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/guidance/HMRC-service-dashboard/HMRC-service-dashboard-start

Some repayments do take longer than the published SLAs due to additional security and compliance checks.