TaxWatch’s Director, George Turner, wrote an op-ed for the Independent setting out why the government’s recent Tax Gap figures should be treated with caution.
The article sets out how the government’s estimates of tax avoidance vastly underestimate the true scale of the problem.
The full article can be accessed here:
Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash
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.
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.