TaxWatch is an investigative think tank shining a forensic light on who pays tax, who doesn’t, and why
HMRC tells MPs it doesn’t know how many large businesses it’s investigating for tax fraud
On 18 May, MPs quizzed senior HMRC officials about how they’re making the biggest multinational companies pay their due taxes. HMRC officials confirmed TaxWatch’s findings that HMRC simply doesn’t know some key facts about its own tax enforcement efforts: including, astonishingly, how many large businesses they are currently investigating for tax fraud or other serious, deliberate tax non-compliance.
Private justice, public loss
While consumers’ fuel bills go up, a £1.5 billion tax bill levied on one of the world’s biggest oil traders remains unsettled. This week it announced bumper trading profits amidst the global oil supply shock. HMRC first alleged that the company’s oil trading profits were being shifted artificially to Switzerland fifteen years ago. So how are the same transactions still continuing today?
Naming and shaming isn’t working
Last year HMRC named 583 deliberate tax evaders, from small businesses to the children of world leaders. Their unpaid taxes and penalties were enough to pay for an extra GP appointment for every child in the UK, and double the figure from the previous year.
Penalties, naming and shaming aren’t working on their own. We suggest two key reasons why not.
Big corporates: tax heroes or tax sinners?
A new National Audit Office enquiry to which TaxWatch gave evidence finds that large business ‘compliance yield’ – unpaid taxes that were recovered or prevented by HMRC’s efforts – has doubled over the last three years. That begs the question: are the UK’s biggest companies avoiding paying their due taxes more than previously?