Understanding the Customer
Research brief
Understanding the Unpaid and
Unaffiliated Agent Population
Behavioural Evidence and Insight Team
Room 3E/03
100 Parliament Street
London
SW1A 2BQ
November 2013
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Terms & Conditions
Background to this research
The Agent population serve a pivotal role in the UK tax system, representing some 8
million tax payers, performing a variety of roles and functions. Whilst small in number,
there are many intricacies and subtypes of Agent – meaning a one size fits all approach is
unsuitable to meet their future needs.
This research is seeking to enhance our understanding of the Unpaid and Unaffiliated
Agent universes – the characteristics, attitudes and motivations alongside an enhanced
picture of the influence they have on their clients.
The Agent Types
Broadly, the agent population can be split into two communities – those who are paid and
those who are unpaid. Our primary focus, in this research, is the unpaid agents; with a
small element focusing on those paid, professional agents who are not members of the
various agent representative bodies (eg CIOT, ICAEW, etc) – that is, they are not affiliated
to these bodies.
Unpaid Agents
a) VCS
The Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) comprises a large number of both local and
national charitable and community organisations. They are broadly composed of a mixture
of current and former professional agents, alongside other unqualified individuals with
some tax experience or training, giving up their spare time to provide an unpaid service for
those in need.
b) Friends and Family
The known Friends and Family population account for somewhere between 45,000 and
80,000 individuals representing their friends, family members or other members of their
community in a private, personal capacity. They may be professional agents using their
skills in an unpaid way; more likely, they are simply friends and family who are a bit more
clued–up/ adept at interacting with HMRC than the taxpayer on whose behalf they are
acting, and are trying to help them meet their obligations to HMRC.
c) Employers
A small minority of employers have, as part of their employment contracts or otherwise,
signed Agent Authorisation Forms for their staff – enabling them to act on their behalf and
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manage their employee's tax affairs. A subset of the Employer population are those
employers identified as Care and Support Employers, who employ staff to meet their care
needs. The Employer subpopulation is not a primary focus of this work, but has been
included here for completeness.
Paid Agents
There are an estimated 15,000 Unaffiliated, Paid Agents (not members of representative
bodies). Our primary interest in this segment, is to understand by what means they keep
themselves up to date with HMRC requirements so that we can communicate with them
about AOSS using those channels.
Agent Online Self Service (AOSS)
The Tax Agent Strategy Programme and the AOSS Project are vital elements in our
strategic ambition of transforming HMRC into a “digital by default” organisation. AOSS is
part of a first wave of four digital services (for HMRC’s individual, business and agent
customers) which will start to really change the way we work with our customers.
The AOSS project will deliver an enhanced online service for all agents (paid or otherwise)
through secure digital services which allow agents to register with HMRC, notify us about
their new clients and enable them to access and use digital services both for themselves
and on behalf of their 8m clients (our individual and business customers). It will allow
HMRC to segment the agent population to differentiate between professional agents and
those acting in an unpaid capacity on behalf of friends and family members and to obtain a
more coherent picture of agent/client relationships within the unpaid, and unaffiliated,
agent space.
By making it possible for agents to use digital services on behalf of their clients the
programme enables the department to realise the full range of efficiency benefits outlined
in its SR13 Digitisation proposition.
AOSS is seeking to introduce new and improved digital registration and authorisation
processes which are more secure and will help to protect agents, clients and HMRC from
fraudulent attacks on the tax system.
The decisions we want this project to help us take
We are hoping to use this research to help us understand the unpaid and unaffiliated
agents populations, across the following areas:

Current experience of those who have completed the 64-8 Authorisation Process
o For both the Agent and their Client
o 64-8 authorisation process – how it currently works for them
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 Why did they need to use one?
o What is working well / meeting their current needs?
o What isn’t working well / could be improved?
o What were the outcomes from this process? Did it work?

Current experience of those who have not completed the 64-8 Authorisation
Process
o Both the Agent and their Client
o Why didn’t they go down the 64-8 authorisation process
 What was their customer journey
 Why didn’t they need to use one?
o What is working well / meeting their current needs?
o What isn’t working well / could be improved?
o What were the outcomes from this process? Did it work?

Drivers of need
o What was it that required the client to use the agent in the first place?
o Relationship with client
 What relationship do they have with their client outside of tax affairs
 How does this influence their action and behaviour

Agent Communications / Information Sources:
o What lines of communication do these unpaid and paid Agents currently use
to obtain info about HMRC requirements - and what is their preferred source
 Why?
o What are their trusted information sources – HMRC or otherwise
o Where do they turn for support / when things go wrong – eg HMRC, or third
parties (who?)

Agent Digital usage
o What do they currently do online? (e.g. use online banking, Amazon etc.)
Of those they use what do they like and why ?
o What difficulties do they have (if any) in using online services?
o How do they use Government services now?
o What would they want from any future online Government Services?
o What problems would they foresee in using Government services online??
o What would help them make the change to using Government services
online (if they don’t already use HMRC digital services) or using this
particular product (if they do)?

AOSS
o Awareness
o How would AOSS fit into their current journey / experience
 How could it enhance it?
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o What would they expect the platform to do?
o Of the features to be offered within AOSS, what are the most important?
 Why?
o What else would they want or expect the tool to offer?
o Identity Assurance – what barriers or benefits would this offer?
o What barriers / assurances would this new secure online platform offer
them?

Support for Agents
o How can we support and encourage a digital transition for the agents?
o What channels / platforms should this support use?
o What is their channel preference?
 Email? Phone?
o What are their priorities when seeking support?
 Speed? Convenience? Formality? Correctness?
o How do these priorities map to the available help (email or phone)?
o What messages could / should we send?

Assisted Digital
o What security / other concerns / barriers would Agents raise / face about
such a service
o Can Agents see the benefits to this?
 Would they use it?
o How can we encourage those Agents not currently online to use these digital
services?
 e.g. security, convenience, means of accessing HMRC/ third party,
etc?
Our research needs
Your proposal should explain your proposed approach and methodology, showing how it
will deliver against the objectives we have set. Your expertise will be essential here, and
we do not wish to be overly prescriptive in defining the methodology. Instead, we expect to
work collaboratively and iteratively with you following the appointment to further develop
and agree the best approach to the work.
Having said that, we offer our own view on methodologies to help inform your thinking.
This is not intended to limit ideas or imply that certain approaches are favoured more than
others – we will judge all proposals on their ability to meet the research objectives.
We are primarily interested in speaking with Friends and Family and smaller VCS
organisations (those that HMRC doesn't currently engage with on a regular basis);
however we believe it also important to speak to Unaffiliated Professional (Paid) Agents
about this journey as well.
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We will endeavour to supply sample for the authorised Friends and Family Agents. For
those without a completed Authorisation form, we would require the successful agency to
free-find.
Additionally, we can provide a list of the VCS organisations that we currently engage with,
so they can be excluded from the fieldwork. We would expect the successful agency to
free-find the Unaffiliated Professional (Paid) Agents.
We are also interested in your views on conducting paired depth interviews with the
Unpaid Agent and the individual / client to explore the particular drivers of need and that
individuals particular needs and whether this approach would fit well within the main body
of work.
To aid our understanding of the typical (or atypical) agent journeys and experiences we
would expect a series of “case studies” as part of the main reporting or as a separate
output.
We are keen to achieve a mix of the following:

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Geography
Drivers of Client need (See chart on page 4)
Head of duty (PAYE issues vs SA issues)
Digital confidence / capability of the agent
For Unaffiliated, Paid Agents – those who run payroll for their customers and
those who don’t.
We would also be interested in any additional factors that you deem relevant to
determining our sample.
The deliverables
The proposal submitted should include:

Understanding of the research brief

Timetable

Personnel, including background and experience

Whether any part of the project will be subcontracted, and if so to whom
The proposal should specify who will be responsible for delivering this project and should
provide detail of the input into the project that will be provided by each named person.
The following criteria will be used to evaluate your proposals.
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Research brief
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Understanding objectives
Calibre of project team
Relevant experience
Added value
Ability to meet timescales
Value for money
Please let us know on receipt of this brief whether you think there will be any conflict of
interest in your submitting a proposal.
In addition, as part of our publication process, we require a publishable version of the
research findings that will be published on the HMRC website. A standard template and
guidance will be provided. This publication is expected to cover all phases and both strands
of work. It should number 8-12 pages in length.
We also require a one page ‘stand alone’ summary of the research incorporating the key
findings and any insights which can be circulated to stakeholders.
Please send proposals back via email.
Budget
We are not able to disclose exact budget information. Please provide a cost for the project
design set out above and set out alternatives if you feel these would better meet the research
objectives.
We have provided the following table to give you a rough idea of the budget on this particular
project. We are not able to provide any further detail and the exact budget could fall at any
point inside the range selected.
Budget Banding
1.1.
£0 - £9,999
1.2.
£10,000 - £24,999
1.3.
£24,999 - £49,999
1.4.
£50,000 - £99,999
1.5.
£100,000 - £149,999
1.6.
£150,000 - £249,000
1.7.
£250,000+
1.8.
Undisclosed
Costs must include travel and other expenses, broken down separately. Costs should include
all fees and expenses but exclude VAT.
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Research brief
General Terms and conditions
On receipt of a satisfactory proposal, the successful research agency will be awarded a fixed price contract for the
project. The Standard Conditions of Contract governing research commissions are laid down by HMRC and are not
negotiable. HMRC observes the general practice of paying only for work satisfactorily completed. All work should comply
with the Code of Conduct of the Market Research Society. The Standard Conditions of Contract are available on request.
Payment terms have been negotiated to split as follows on most projects (however there will always be exceptions –
which we will do our best to cater for)
30% on commission
30% on Fieldwork commencement
40% on completion
When costing proposals it would be helpful to ensure we can see these key stages clearly.
Some key elements of our standard terms are below:
Contractual obligations
As a result of government policy to achieve greater transparency in public procurement and help deliver improved value
for money, HMRC is obliged to publish tender documents for all contracts with a whole life value of over £10,000. There
is a further obligation to publish all contracts with a whole life value of over £10,000 with effect from January 2011. It i s a
condition of bidding for this work that applicants accept these obligations and agree to the subsequent publication of the
contract once awarded.
Data handling
In most cases, any data we supply will be encrypted, probably using the highest encryption used by Winzip v9 or above.
It is your responsibility to ensure appropriate steps are taken to ensure you are able to receive and decrypt our data.
We also require confirmation at appropriate times of the deletion of customer records from both removable and fixed
media within your organisation.
Please note that HMRC does not permit the use of USB sticks and so all electronic versions should be provided on CD.
Once appointed, you should agree with your HMRC contact what security rating any data or documentation you produce
should have and how it subsequently should be handled.
As part of our standard data handling requirements, as part of your proposal we will require details of your plan to
receive, store and use any data that we may supply to you. In most cases the data we supply to you will contain
customers’ personal details and we need to be sure that you will treat this data appropriately.
This should include precise details of the data handling and security procedures you have in place. In particular, please
detail how, once we have delivered the data to you, how you will transfer and store it and who in your organisation will be
able to access it. You should also detail your processes for archival of and/or destroying the data that has been finished
with. As an example this should include, what systems you have that are accessible from the internet, how access to the
information is managed, and details of how your data servers are backed-up and maintained.
If you have supplied current information, this does not need to be provided again.
Documentation
HMRC will require the publishable report delivered in both pdf and word formats. The pdf document should include the
file size as part of the filename.
In addition, HMRC will require draft copies of all key documents, such as recruitment questionnaires, presentation
charts, top line and final report. These are to be submitted in sufficient time for comments to be incorporated into the
final version and for our approval to be given for production of the final version to take place.
NB ‘Personal’, ‘Confidential’ and ‘Commercial’ sensitive information has been redacted
according to the provisions in the FOI Act (sections 40, 41 & 42).
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