by Mike Lewis | Aug 13, 2026
Tackling the tax gap is back in vogue. (If it ever went out of style). Boosting tax revenues without raising taxes is appealing to any government, but especially to one that has big new plans but has inherited strict fiscal rules. Day 3 of the Burnham administration...
by Mike Lewis | Jun 26, 2026
The small business tax gap is, on the face of it, the biggest and most urgent problem for UK tax administration. According to HMRC’s figures, an astonishing £36.7 billion of due taxes went unpaid in 2024/25 by small businesses (those with turnovers under £10...
by Mike Lewis | Jun 23, 2026
You might be forgiven for thinking that it was a good news story. Today HMRC released its ‘tax gap’ figures — its detailed estimates of the amount of due taxes that have gone unpaid thanks to error, carelessness, avoidance, evasion and fraud. The tax gap is a...
by Mike Lewis | Jan 14, 2026
Yesterday (13 January) Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee grilled HMRC’s chief and senior staff about their efforts to tackle tax avoidance, evasion and debt. MPs referenced TaxWatch research and investigations in questions about corporate tax reliefs,...
by Mike Lewis | Jun 19, 2025
Summary: Quietly buried in HMRC spreadsheets released today is the news that the UK Tax Gap – the gap between tax due and tax collected – seems consistently to be billions of pounds bigger than HMRC previously estimated. New evidence suggests that the...
