I thought it worth posting some comparable data on the tax gap.
This is how HMRC is saying today that it has moved over time:
And this is how they say it is made up today:
Note the bottom right figure of £34 billion agrees with the table above.
Now lets look at earlier tables as first published for 2007/08 and 2008/09 (I have these on this blog: HMRC now hide the originals):
And
So, note that the 2007/08 total was £40 billion and that for 2008/09 was £42 billion.
But now those figures have been restated. Now they are £38 billion and £36 billion respectively, even reversing the trend in the data.
This is supposedly due to changed methodologies. Now I have no problem with improving methodology, we all do that. But to restate and to not make clear the degree to which you have done it is just lying about the state of understanding at the time the work was originally done and that I consider wholly unacceptable - as it is in accounting practice for precisely that reason. But HMRc think they can get away with it.
Candidly, that's just not good enough from an authority where honesty, transparency and consistency are the required standards for conduct.
On this basis today's published data is just a straightforward misrepresentation of the truth. Call it a lie if you like.
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I’m not sure I understand the sentence “But to restate and to make clear the degree to which you have done it is just lying about understanding at the time and that I consider wholly unacceptable.” Is there a missing “not” after the first “and”? Or is the complaint that the need to restate by such a degree means that they should have known they did not understand at the time they published the original figures?
You’re entirely right
A not is missing
Can you lend me a sub-editor?
I’m no expert on tax but find this site fascinating. Could the ‘revisions’ have anything to do with which political party was in power at the time and which political party is in power now? Could the Con Lib ‘coalescence’ have instructed the HMRC to do this? God help us.
If so, then an appropriately revised old saying could be “there are lies, damn lies, statistics and neo-liberals”. Please note that this would also apply to the neo-libs who unfortunately belong to the Labour party too (if New Labour could go to war in Iraq on a false basis, they might also have over-reported tax revenue).
Forgive me whilst I get into this a bit more but I’ve felt for some time that from Thatcher onwards we’ve had very few ‘real’ politicians in Westminster. When I say ‘real’ I mean those who saw it as their job to achieve some sort of balance in society. I think that is called ‘fairness’ or even ‘equality’.
Whilst the press has been busy scaring the man & woman in the street by telling us to watch out for those ‘nasty’ Trots’ and dungaree wearing lesbians who will destroy our civilisation (absolute testicular material BTW), the REAL enemy within has been ex city workers and business men/women who all-to-readily (I wonder why?) come into politics and have then gone about systematically dismantling the state apparatus designed to deal with the ‘5 Giants’ (see Nicholas Timmins – 1995) from within Government. This is still a story that needs to be told in great detail and amounts to one of the biggest coups in British social and political history ever.
It is also why the problems of tax raised in this blog seem so intractable. Those who need to deal with this don’t want to because it is in their and their followers interests not to.
My personal view Richard is that the Tories in particular have no wish to raise tax revenues which is why they are happy to see real wages drop. It may also be why the Lib Damned want to take the poor out of tax because they know all to well that taxation is used to make transfer payments (benefits) and also provides cash for budgets for services such as the NHS, social housing (my current profession – but for how much longer I don’t know)etc. How can taking the poor out of tax help the poor? It just paints them into a tighter corner as a burden on the rich or employed and sets them up to be resented even more. Reducing taxation means having an excuse to get rid of the public sector because you can claim we can’t afford it ( ‘we’ meaning the richest people) but just tax enough so that you can have a small armed forces whom you can roll out every once in a while just to impress the other nations at major events or when helping your neo-liberal mates out across the pond.
Also, if you allow the reduction of wages so much so that the majority of people have to use debt to support their consumption of goods and services, telling them that you are to reduce their taxes (another outgoing competing with the servicing of their debts) is likely to get you elected again and again because you are artificially creating such a choice.
I often wonder what would happen if we spent as much money advertising the benefits of taxation as we did say when we were selling off the nationalised industries? Professor Paul Spicker at Aberdeen University is a bit of a welfare guru (my words not his, he is far more humble than that) and he has written widely and well about how we could re-configure the basis of the welfare state to appeal to the country. I might be wrong but if the same sort of ideas could be used to highlight the benefits to everyone of fair taxation as the two are closely linked.
Thanks.
Note my blog coming out very soon
I share your doubts
Well said
I haven’t has a chance to look in detail at it yet, but I do note that the full report (as opposed to the “Noddy does tax” GOV.UK summary that the blog links to) does have a lot of explanation of why the figures have changed. Inevitably if the economic data that are being used are further refined, the estimates are also going to change.
I have some sympathy for the argument that people who have never “joined the club” of taxpayers are under-represented, but I think accusing HMRC of dishonesty isn’t borne out by the leve of disclosure they give.
If a report does not make clear that there is a restatement of earlier year data that is dishonest even if later that is made clear – when most people will have given up reading
No accounts can do that, for good reason
HMRC should not operate to a lesser standard
I stand by my comment – the headline table they have published is misleading