UCR Entity Resolution

The UCR Programme's remit is to match and link records for Individuals Personal Tax, for sole traders and organisations VAT, Self-Assessment and Employer Payrolls.

(4 of HMRC's

key strategic heads of duty systems) to form a unique customer

record.

The Match Project, developed and deployed an in-house

Enterprise Matching Tool (EMS) in November 2023. Currently,

this capability allows for matching of individuals (without a

business interest i.e., excluding self-employed individuals) using

designatory customer data along with the key internal identifiers

associated with the individual. EMS Entity resolution does not

currently support the complexities associated with matching

organisational data. Whilst, the in-house capability is able to link

less complex customers/records relating to individuals using First

Name, Last Name, Business Name, Tax Identifier, Address, and

Date of Birth. The requirement for UCR's goes beyond this, not

all heads of duty have an ID that can be linked across systems as

is the case for organisational matching, sole proprietorships,

partnerships.

To develop the in-house capability beyond individuals would

require significant work to address the limited functional features

and encryption enhancements needed. That coupled with the

significant cost to both run and maintain EMS no longer

represents a return on investment. These finding have recently

been presented to Technical Design Authority and a decision

endorsed to replace the Enterprise Matching Tool (EMS) with a

SaaS Entity Resolution Tool. Without an Entity Resolution

capability, we cannot reduce the incidents of low confident

matches, the associated risks and the impact of exceptions to

operational areas.

A SaaS Entity Resolution Tool will address these complexities and

leave behind a future proof strategic capability through the UCR

Programme that can deliver a performant, saleable and

extendable matching service that can provide a view of complex

corporate structures and legal entities e.g. Legal entity for a

corporate's capital gains taxes might be different to the same

corporations but different legal entities VAT. This activity can

only be completed using an Entity resolution capability that goes

beyond the current capability within Enterprise Matching Service

(EMS), the solution developed in house. Effective Entity

resolution will also support the business in addressing current

challenges faced by the Operational Areas relating to Exceptions.

Whilst a human can likely look at records from different sources

and determined if they refer to the same product or not, this is

not scalable across all records and the complexity increases

quickly with more and larger datasets increasing resourcing

pressure on operational areas. Effective Entity Resolution will

work by reducing the instances of inconsistent matches, false

negatives and false positives and derive canonical entities in a

systematic and scalable way.