HMRC is placing great reliance on an ambitious IT transformation programme to improve its compliance operations, but it has not made it clear what benefits the large business directorate will see and when. At Spending Review 2025, HMRC received £1.6 billion of investment for new IT infrastructure. It has since published a transformation ‘roadmap’, which sets out how it intends to implement its IT transformation, and says that it has the goal of becoming a digital first organisation by 2029–30. HMRC claims that this infrastructure upgrade will enable it to improve its 3 collection and analysis of data and risk assess more accurately, and so avoid costly investigations. It also plans to make greater use of AI, which it expects will help it analyse large caches of data more quickly and speed up compliance investigations. While the plans are promising, they are also highly ambitious, with HMRC rating delivery as an amber risk. With HMRC only able to cite limited examples for us of how its new IT infrastructure will better support its large-business tax compliance work, we are not yet convinced the IT transformation programme will deliver real benefit for its large business directorate. recommendation In its Treasury Minute response, HMRC should set out: a. which aspects of its IT transformation programme will benefit large business tax compliance the most; b. what spending from the overall £1.6 billion investment these aspects will receive; and c. the key milestones for implementing these aspects, so that the Committee can more closely monitor progress.