More than seven million people started a new job in 2025. The HMRC app would like them all to know that it has their tax code, their employment history and absolutely no intention of asking where they see themselves in five years.
HMRC says the figure rose by 300,000 from the previous year. New starters can use the app to find employment and income history, National Insurance details, PAYE information and their tax code. The first day at work may therefore involve slightly less panic and one fewer search for a letter from 2019.
The app had more than 2.7 million new users in 2025. Almost 270,000 people downloaded their PAYE history, while more than 507,000 used the tax calculator. The calculator can explain how much tax a salary attracts. It cannot explain why every meeting is suddenly a quick sync, but government technology must respect the limits of science.
More than 522,000 people downloaded their National Insurance number to a digital phone wallet. This is excellent news for anyone who has spent a morning emptying drawers in search of a folded note marked “NI???” in blue biro. The phone can now store an important government number beside 4,000 photographs of a dog belonging to somebody they once met.
The service is being promoted during National Careers Week, as jobseekers and new employees are encouraged to prepare for the administrative side of employment. The app cannot iron a shirt, identify the communal mug or stop a manager announcing that the office is a family before handing one person three people’s work.
It can put the relevant details close at hand when an employer asks for them. That gives a new starter one fewer bureaucratic mystery to solve while pretending to understand the printer and nodding at a colleague who has said the word synergy with alarming confidence.
There is something quietly radical about making tax records easy to find. Britain has spent years treating basic information as a treasure hunt involving passwords, envelopes and a relative who remembers where everything is. The app has placed the answer inside a phone, where it can sit confidently beside the torch and a screenshot of train times from 2023.
Seven million people have entered new workplaces with a little more payroll information ready to go. The next great leap for public administration is an app that tells them which meeting could have been an email, which mug is communal and whether “just circling back” is a warning. Until then, HMRC has solved the tax code while the office has kept the coffee machine classified as a matter of national security.
Source: HM Revenue & Customs.
