TaxWatch is an investigative think tank shining a forensic light on who pays tax, who doesn’t, and why
MPs ask tough questions about closing the tax gap
On 13 January, Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee grilled HMRC’s chief and senior staff about their efforts to tackle tax avoidance, evasion and tax debt. MPs referenced TaxWatch research and investigations in questions about corporate tax reliefs, recruitment, penalties for enablers of tax evasion, and the ‘offshore tax gap’. There was good news in some of the responses – but others raised more questions.
Making tax digital? Five things we’ve learned about HMRC’s Digital Transformation in 2025
HMRC has promised that from 2026 it will transform the way it uses digital tools to tackle tax evasion and interface with taxpayers. With the clock ticking, here are five things we found out this year about how HMRC’s digital transformation – including Making Tax Digital – is going.
A year of drift on offshore secrecy
At the very moment the Chancellor was searching for fiscal headroom at last week’s Budget, just across Parliament Square UK ministers and representatives of some of the world’s most important offshore financial centres were presiding over another year of drift and broken promises on tackling offshore secrecy.
“New £2.6bn tax compliance crackdown can’t work if existing tools are barely being used”: TaxWatch Budget analysis
The Budget’s third-largest tax pledge relies on a UK tax authority that is suffering from recruitment delays and unfinished IT systems. Just 26 of 6,700 extra compliance/debt staff promised by Chancellor are so far in post. A key tax to counter digital giants’ profit-shifting will remain despite Trump pressure, but the Budget has missed opportunities to tackle abused corporate reliefs now as large as the child benefit budget.