A man called Bob Mountain, who as far as I know I have never met, has an article out on the Open Democracy web site about HMRC and it's lack of resources. Bob should know something about this. His biography says:
Bob Mountain was formerly a senior Inland Revenue official, and one-time head of the Oil Taxation Office; in retirement a local CAB adviser, and Family Court chairman.
His argument is:
Lots of information doing the rounds has been known about for years. The real problem is that HMRC have had their budget slashed, and they have adopted an extremely soft stance toward tax cheats.
As he points out, almost everything about the HSBC revelations was known to some people - and had been talked about on sites like this, that of the Tax Justice Network and at the PAC. As he says:
The fresh news was the confirmation of the Swiss bank's active promotion of tax “mitigation” strategies for depositors; and confirmation of HMRC's light-touch response to the whole business.
I agree. And Bob offers explanation:
In practice, HMRC isn't now able to operate a credible prosecution policy (or operate a half-decent telephone helpline service for ordinary taxpayers and claimants) because its resources have been virtually halved in a decade.
No one will be surprised that I agree with that.
He also offers a solution:
The Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise departments, formerly two bodies with distinct identities, separate from the Treasury, are now merged and housed with the Chancellor and his ministers. On HMRC's reformed Board it would be good to see some freethinkers, like Sikka, or Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK, other members of the Green New Deal, or John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network.
Instead, we find former tax planners Ian Barlow (formerly KPMG), John Whiting (formerly PWC), and Edward Troup (formerly Simmons and Simmons). And moving lately in the opposite direction was Dave Hartnett, now working for Deloittes, and HSBC.
This is not self promotion, but I do think at least someone from the list Bob mentions should be on the HMRC Board. The reason is obvious, I would have thought. Whilst HMRC has moved from failed policy to PR disaster to poor management to justified accusation of bias, one after another, a small group of people in civil society have been innovating the solutions to tax problems that are now being adopted to tackle the real issues HMRC should be facing. It's time that was reflected in its governance. But as yet it isn't. And that's undoubtedly part of its problem.
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I consider this as being ‘the cat is well and truly out the bag’!
Captured, captivated and captive; by, by and of: Big Money.
The non-execs on the HMRC Board are meant to “advise and challenge” the management of HMRC. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/groups/hmrc-board
It makes sense to me that the Board should include some people willing to challenge the status quo.
The Chief Executive herself is of course a career civil servant. A trail of problems seems to have followed her around, from local government, through the UK Border Agency and the West Coast Mainline franchise, to HMRC. All rather unfortunate.
HMRC gathers the lion’s share of government revenues. It makes little sense to cut staffing at HMRC if the cuts ultimately reduce the revenues that are gathered by more than the amount saved.
I have said it before- the merger of Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue (by Labour) was not a success- the old Inland Revenue culture of not “wanting to upset the customer”(especially the large ones) came to dominate the new department, experienced ex Customs staff such as myself have gone and not been replaced, and as for the top management- again I have to repeat – Why is HMRC always at the bottom in the Civil Service staff engagement surveys ?
What is most concerning is that HMRC can’t even do the basics let alone catch up with cleverly advised evaders/avoiders. OK all Governments operate on myths of competence but HMRC wins the award as the Emperor with no clothes at all.
The following is interesting, even though you may not necessarily agree with all that is said.
UK Column…5:30 mins in to 15:55 mins – from their news broadcast on 17 February 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clqOxo0XYH4
Some spectacularly ignorant comments here from people with their own agenda. HMRC was created to reduce costs and has done so spectacularly well. It’s an absolute “no brainier” that reducing head count (and reducing the reward package of those that remain) results in lower quality service – whether that is answering the phone or countering fraud and avoidance. The public sector is no different from the private sector in that regard; pay peanuts, get monkeys.
All Government Departments have just one dominant customer – their Minister – whose every whim must be satisfied. Every other citizen ranks nowhere. So, please address the real problem of political accountability. Bob Mountain & Richard Murphy are right and need our unequivocal support to counter the vested interests like HSBC who corrupt our national institutions and bring into disrepute the equitable basis under which UK citizens accept taxation.