What will happen when sometime soon when a large number of our most able tax inspectors will have retired?

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As the Telegraph reports:

Around one third of staff at HMRC's enforcement and compliance division will be eligible for retirement in the next five years, figures in an internal HMRC presentation seen by The Telegraph indicate.

The exodus of the department's most experienced tax professionals comes as HMRC attempts to meet a Treasury target for increasing the amount of tax it collects.

As the paper notes, this comes in a broader context:

HMRC has cut about 37,000 jobs since 2005, according to the Public and Commercial Services Union, and plans to cut around a further 10,000 jobs by 2015 to reduce costs.

Peter Lockhart, national officer at the PCS, which represents the majority of HMRC workers, said: "HMRC [staff] retirement figures are higher than we thought. HMRC is so grossly understaffed that it is going to struggle to bring in the money the Treasury needs.

The issue of an aging workforce is going to exacerbate the problem and will be further compounded by the government's decision to cut a further 10,000 HMRC posts."

Quite so.

As a result of governemtn policy we're destroying our ability to collect tax to pay for government.

The trouble is, that's not by accident. That appears to be by design.


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