Salesforce wins up to £2 billion, 15-year deal with UK tax authority to modernise HMRC customer service

Salesforce said it has been selected by the UK’s Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to modernise tax services for citizens and businesses through a long-term technology and service transformation. The deal, announced 15 October, is structured as a 15-year strategic agreement with a potential value of up to £2 billion, with Salesforce positioned as HMRC’s Enterprise Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) provider.

HMRC collects revenue that funds public services, and the government agency serves more than individual taxpayers and businesses at scale. Salesforce said the initiative is designed to streamline how HMRC interacts with taxpayers by unifying legacy systems onto a single, secure platform. The company expects the platform to provide a “360-degree” view of taxpayer interactions across channels, aiming to reduce the time it takes to resolve inquiries and increase first-contact resolution rates.

A central part of the plan is to shift HMRC’s operations toward digital service delivery targets. Salesforce linked the project to HMRC’s ambition to reach 90% digital service delivery by 2030, while still maintaining support for people who need extra assistance. For taxpayers, Salesforce said the redesign should make information clearer through preferred channels and eliminate repeated contacts for the same issue.

Salesforce said the new system will use multiple parts of its platform stack, including Agentforce, Public Sector Solutions, and Marketing Cloud, underpinned by Salesforce’s Data 360 data platform. Data 360 is described by Salesforce as a trusted approach to connecting information, with the goal of creating a single customer profile that combines interaction history. In HMRC’s case, Salesforce said it will enable faster query resolution and higher rates of first-contact resolution, “for the first time.”

The company also said HMRC will adopt Agentforce, Salesforce’s AI agent platform, to help caseworkers. Salesforce described Agentforce as operating within governed workflows, with AI used to automate routine administration, triage incoming queries, and route complex cases to specialists. The company emphasized that human oversight by trained HMRC staff remains integral to taxpayer decisions, framing the tools as augmenting capacity rather than replacing accountability.

Beyond service workflow changes, the announcement highlighted efforts aimed at detecting fraud and improving enforcement outcomes. Salesforce said UK decision-intelligence firm Quantexa will collaborate on the deployment to connect complex data and identify patterns of fraud. Salesforce added that Quantexa’s role would include providing caseworkers with real-time risk scores and helping uncover indicates of hidden fraud networks, supporting HMRC’s efforts to recover uncollected revenue and close the tax gap.

Salesforce also addressed security and governance requirements for handling personal and sensitive data. It said the platform adheres to UK data protection standards, including encryption and role-based access controls across interactions. The company framed this as necessary to ensure data remains secure in a government setting where oversight and controls are tightly managed.

The agreement comes as Salesforce described the UK as pursuing a broader AI capability and workforce agenda. Salesforce pointed to its own commitments in the country, including a $6 billion, five-year investment in the UK spanning 2023 to 2028 and more than $200 million in UK AI companies through Salesforce Ventures. On the project specifically, Salesforce said it also committed to allocating 15% of its professional advisory services work to UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), aiming to involve local businesses in shaping and evolving the platform.

Salesforce said it expects workforce development to be part of the rollout. It cited collaboration with schools and employment services and described apprenticeship routes focused on young people, neurodivergent individuals, and underrepresented groups. The company also referenced a broader commitment with the UK government to train 10 million workers in AI by 2030, saying the HMRC project supports that goal through digital and AI skills pathways.

What remains unclear from the announcement is the precise implementation timeline, the detailed scope of functionality in the unified platform, and how HMRC will measure performance beyond first-contact resolution. The company also did not break out any specific service-level targets tied to the up to £2 billion figure, nor did it provide financial implications for Salesforce or procurement milestones. Those details are likely to emerge as the project progresses and HMRC and Salesforce move from agreement toward delivery and evaluation.

Over the next year, the key items to watch will be how HMRC phases the migration off legacy systems, how quickly AI-assisted workflows become embedded in case handling, and whether the Quantexa risk-scoring component improves detection and triage in practice. The broader significance will be whether the project demonstrates measurable gains in digital uptake and resolution performance while keeping human oversight central, a balance that many public-service agencies are trying to strike as they scale AI-enabled customer service.