Quietly buried in HMRC spreadsheets released today is the news that the UK Tax Gap is consistently much bigger than HMRC previously said. New evidence suggests that the government may be under-estimating by several billion pounds the amount of income hidden offshore, and non-compliance amongst the largest and wealthiest taxpayers.
Shrinking the £40 billion tax gap and £38 billion of outstanding tax debts is going to be critical for making today’s Spending Review numbers add up. Can HMRC deliver this with a real-term budget cut?
From the White House to the tech sector, the UK’s Digital Services Tax has been described as a discriminatory ‘tariff’ almost entirely targeting large US internet companies. New statistics show that’s not quite true.
Why aren’t enablers of tax abuse being penalised? HMRC’s powers to sanction delinquent tax advisers have roadblocks built in, and there are still gaps in naming and shaming.
HMRC is recovering more missing tax from wealthy individuals. But beneath the headlines: the tax this group is underpaying may be larger than previously thought, and is likely growing, while penalties for their non-compliance have plummeted.
The government wants to step up the fight against enablers of tax abuse (again). New powers and better information can help. But HMRC is barely using the powers and penalties it already has.
Scrapping the UK’s Digital Services Tax is the opposite of a good strategy in the face of a US trade war, when instead it should be reformed to operate better for the British public finances
Government’s Spring Statement hopes compliance and debt collection efforts pay off to recover more tax lost to avoidance
TaxWatch launches new report illustrating the damage that a lack of regulatory oversight causes taxpayers seeking help to comply with their obligations & advocating for urgent widespread reform.
The latest report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) paints a concerning picture of tax evasion in the UK retail sector. It highlights significant gaps in enforcement, underestimated scale of evasion, and a worrying decline in prosecutions. The report raises significant concerns about HMRC’s seemingly incurious approach to the scale of tax evasion.
A new report released today shows that HMRC’s costs are rising, but questions their efficiency and approaches to digitisation and compliance.
HMRC levy over £100m of penalties for late filing on 1.1 million individuals many of whom won’t owe any income tax. Such a policy is bad for our tax regime overall and undermines trust, it needs to change.