Salesforce wins up to £2 billion, 15-year HMRC deal to modernise UK tax services

One platform for legacy systems

Under the agreement, Salesforce will unify HMRC's legacy systems onto a single secure platform. According to Salesforce, this gives HMRC a 360-degree view of taxpayer interactions and is meant to enable faster, first-contact resolution of queries. The platform will also give HMRC teams real-time taxpayer insights, automated workflows and AI-assisted tools that Salesforce says significantly reduce manual workloads.

Salesforce says these capabilities support HMRC's ambition for 90% digital service delivery by 2030, while maintaining support for people who need extra assistance.

The company points to the scale of the task. The UK tax system supports more than 34 million citizens and five million businesses, and Salesforce says legacy systems and fragmented channels have made seamless service hard to deliver. The new system will use Agentforce, Public Sector Solutions and Marketing Cloud, and is underpinned by Salesforce's Data 360 platform. It will give HMRC a single view of each customer's interaction history across every contact channel.

For taxpayers, Salesforce says this means clearer information through their preferred channels and fewer repetitive contacts. For HMRC, it describes a unified customer profile and higher rates of first-contact resolution, "for the first time".

AI agents with human oversight

HMRC will adopt Agentforce, which Salesforce describes as its AI agent platform, to assist caseworkers. The agents will automate routine administration, triage inbound queries and route complex cases to the right specialists.

According to Salesforce, these tools will run within tightly governed workflows, and human oversight from trained HMRC staff will remain integral to every taxpayer decision. The company also says its platform adheres to strict UK data protection standards, with robust encryption and role-based access controls built in across every interaction.

Kendall Collins, CEO of Missionforce and Government Cloud at Salesforce, said HMRC is "a global leader demonstrating what's possible when governments embrace innovation with people and trust at the centre."

Fraud detection and UK partners

UK decision-intelligence firm Quantexa will collaborate on the deployment. Salesforce says Quantexa will provide tools that automatically connect complex data and spot patterns of fraud, giving caseworkers real-time risk scores and uncovering signals of hidden fraud networks. Salesforce says this supports HMRC's efforts to recover uncollected revenue and close the tax gap.

Salesforce has also committed to allocating 15% of its professional advisory services work on the project to UK small and medium-sized enterprises. The company frames this within its $6 billion, five-year investment in the UK (2023-2028), and says Salesforce Ventures has invested over $200 million in UK AI companies.

Digital skills and what it means

The agreement also carries a skills component. Salesforce says it will work with schools, employment services and its customer and partner ecosystem to widen access to AI and digital skills. This includes apprenticeship routes focused on young people, neurodivergent individuals and underrepresented groups. The efforts support Salesforce's wider commitment with the UK Government to train 10 million workers in AI by 2030.

Zahra Bahrololoumi CBE, President & CEO of Salesforce UK & Ireland, said: "Technology is only one part of the value this contract will deliver."

For taxpayers, the intended outcome is fewer repeated contacts and quicker answers. For the market, the deal is a large public sector reference for Salesforce's agent platform. The results will depend on delivery over the contract term, and the source gives no timeline for rollout.