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?
Are small businesses tax dodgers or tax victims?
Parliament’s Business and Trade Committee says tax compliance is crushing small businesses. HMRC says small business tax abuse is out of control. Can both be true?
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.
“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.
Staffing delays could threaten Chancellor’s £15 billion tax revenue plans
Though it’s been absent from the pre-Budget debate, the Chancellor’s second-biggest revenue-raising policy so far is a plan to boost HMRC’s personnel & systems: recruiting 6,700 more staff to chase an extra £15.5 billion of evaded tax and tax debts. Yet TaxWatch has found that just 26 of these promised new staff are yet in post, calling into question a key plank of the government’s tax and spend plans.
In the run-up to a make-or-break Budget, TaxWatch’s new State of Tax Administration report takes a deep dive into how HMRC has been running the tax system over the last year.
Big fish, little fish…
With limited resources, how should the UK prioritise different types and targets of tax enforcement?
The transparency registers that weren’t
UK ministers have praised five of the UK’s Overseas Territories for searchable registers revealing who really owns companies registered there. TaxWatch has found that one of these new registers doesn’t even exist, and others have erected last-minute legal blocks against access.
New weapons, same problems?
Stronger powers against ‘enablers’ – those who design and enable aggressive tax avoidance and evasion – are back on the table once again. But new figures show that existing powers are still not being used.
Broken offshore promises undermine the UK’s tax system
New figures on UK tax enforcement show that Pandora Papers leaks can’t supplant properly available information about who really owns offshore companies.