The tax gap is on the agenda

Posted on

I was at a PCS “drop in” briefing session on the tax gap at the House of Commons this afternoon.

A fascinating cross section of MPs attended from across the political spectrum — Tories being well represented.

At the end of the afternoon I was amazed to discover 40 MPs had attended. That’s an astonishing number for a small parliamentary briefing. And across the spectrum there was agreement on three things.

The first is there is a tax gap.

The second is that calculating the last penny’s worth is not the issue of importance. There was widespread belief that HMRC had understated the claim — and in fairness some scepticism from one quarter in the main that my number may be too big — but also agreement that wherever the real number was in the remaining range this is an issue of massive importance.

Which led  to the third point of agreement - which was that in the face of this cutting staff at H M Revenue & Customs makes no sense at all.

For an issue unheard of a few years ago that is a massive step forward.

NB Posted 12 hours later than planned due to IT problems


Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:

You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.

And if you would like to support this blog you can, here: