The Guardian has reported:

Revenue and Customs has disclosed that 57 barristers have been caught evading tax. Thirty-six reached a private settlement with Revenue and Customs and agreed to return £605,000 between them in unpaid tax and fines. Some 21 are still being investigated.

As the Commons Public Accounts Committee has said, HM Revenue & Customs must be given the resources to prosecute tax fraud amongst those who should know better. Not innocent error on tax returns, I stress, but deliberate abuse, of which there is plenty.

It is madness to be cutting staff when this abuse is known to exist.

It is politically inappropriate to be advertising on television about benefit fraud (the value of which is much lower and the risk of prosecution for which is thirty times higher) when tax abuse, often by the wealthiest in society continues with such low risk attached to it that it is considered acceptable to live in the grey margin between tax avoidance and tax evasion, neither of which is socially acceptable.

Let's pay for an appropriate tax authority now: the yield on the investment is substantial, for the government, but most of all for society as a whole which wins from a fair tax system where each pays what they owe, reducing the overall burden for all honest tax payers.