ARC - the Association of Revenue and Customs - which is the union for higher grade staff at H M Revenue & Customs has issued a press release today saying:
The Association of Revenue and Customs (ARC) has described today's disclosure of HM Revenue and Customs' detailed plans for the next few years, which show a crackdown on evasion by small and medium-sized businesses but fewer resources to tackle avoidance by multi-nationals and the wealthy, as letting big businesses “off the hook”.
In Autumn the Government announced, as part of its spending review that HMRC would be cut by more than £3bn, although some limited “re-investment” was said to be targeting fraud. Only now have detailed plans emerged, and these show further steep reductions in the senior grades — the grades that deal primarily with large business and the wealthy.
Graham Black, ARC President, said: “This is just as we feared. HMRC is reducing by a further 15% to around half the size it was a few years ago. And while some extra resources are being used, rightly, to target fraud, the number of senior staff capable of dealing with complex avoidance and evasion will tumble yet further, by over 400. “There is a huge tax gap, caused in part by well-advised businesses and individuals stepping aside from taking their share of the pain. Why should banks and major businesses be let off the hook, when most citizens in the UK pay their fair share in taxation? The country cannot afford this madness. The Government is acting like an unhinged Robin Hood — taking from the poor and giving to the rich”.
Graham Black is right: this is madness. Any sane person can see that.
George Osborne can't. Draw your own conclusions and at the same time decide where he sees his own future career: will he be on the side of the tax avoiders, or on the side of the tax enforcers? I think that the answer is pretty obvious, and that makes him wholly unsuitable to be Chancellor.
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You mean it’s just one of many things that make him unsuitable to be chancellor. Actually, I’m hard put to it to find any reason why he should have been chancellor in the first place.
BB
Based on rthe above, I assume that as Gordon Brown oversaw an even larger cut in staff at HMRC, he too was totally unsuitable to be chancellor.
What would be meaningful from the tax inspectors union is a bit more detail on how additional resources would help the HMRC stop tax evasion and avoidance.
Are they saying that reduced numbers means they will accept something that appears to be wrong – at the end of the day companies still have to be assessed. If they are shorthanded, I would have assumed that the assessment process would be far slower than before. They seem to be suggesting that they will not be as diligent as should be in order to get assessments processed. Or are they just going to go for easy targets?
Oh dear, you don’t know much about tax to you? Corporation taxes self-assessed: the revenue do not have to assess it. Their job is to challenge the self-assessment, and they have far too few people to do that. That’s the problem
And you are right, Gordon Brown did oversee a massive reduction in the staff at HMRC, and he was wrong to do so. I’m quite candid about that, and always have been. But at least hge did so when tax revenues were rising – something most people like to forget
Process now, check later – if no enquiry is started within the designated time, the assessment is final. The jist of my argument remains! It is merely deferred assessment!
Respectfully – that’s fundamentally different – but a crap tax system – on that i agree
‘George Osborne can’t’ [see this is madness]. No Richard, that would be true if he were absolutely stupid, which he obviously isn’t. Your statement should read ‘George Osborne doesn’t [see this is madness]. The question then is: why? I suspect you know the answer to that as well as I and many of the readers of your blog do.
It’s the world according to Helmsley
100% Agreement of the thrust of this ARC comment. But please RM leave out the Tory bashing- it’s so old Left Wing
It’s also utterly appropriate – which is why I do it
Its certainly not new left wing
Justin, we have produced a lot of information around how extra resources for HMRC would help to tackle tax avoidance and evasion. Our Being Bold report is located here:
http://arctheunion.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/arc_beingbold_20102.pdf
Richard I can confirm this is true. I recently met HMRC officials over LVCR issues and they said they had already taken action against LVCR abusers using the Halifax doctrine since the intent of the abuse of LVCR is to avoid tax and therefore tax should be payable. They revealed that so far everyone challenged using Halifax had put their hands up, and paid up the VAT but because they had coughed up, this had not actually established a precedent regarding LVCR abuse and Halifax. Because they hadn’t established a precedent HMRC were not prepared to tackle the bigger companies (HMV, Tesco, Amazon, Play.com etc) as ‘they might lose if it went to court’. That seems pretty flimsy to me. Lets look at the logic of that. If they take no action they lose tax, so they are saying doing something that might save tax is too risky, because it will lose tax. ???????? It appears some other agenda is at work and one that protects certain companies.