The TUC’s report ‘The Missing Billions: The UK Tax Gap’ has already got good press coverage.
The FT has given it prominent coverage and appropriately leads by saying that the Trades Union Congress said its proposals would tackle “the growing gap between the super-rich and the rest of society”. Brendan Barber, general secretary, said: “This is [...]
Also filed in
|
|
I was on the BBC’s Today programme this morning and addressed the policy issues that my report for the TUC raises. Mike Warburton was the respondent. You could summarise his argument as ‘there’s always been tax avoidance so what are you worried about’?
Mike, there’s always been murder too. Should we stop worrying?
It really is time [...]
Polly Toynbee has written about tax today for the Guardian, no doubt inspired by the new TUC report on the subject that I wrote for them. As she says:
Today a report commissioned by the TUC uncovers the extent of tax avoidance by the wealthy and by companies. Exhaustive scrutiny of the company reports of the [...]
The TUC published a report called ‘The Missing Billions: The UK Tax Gap’ this morning. I’ll declare an interest now: I wrote this report.
It’s message is simple, but based upon a mass of research in HM Revenue & Customs data with regard to individuals and in the accounts of the 50 largest companies in the [...]
Accountancy Age reports:
The National Audit Office (NAO) has found the Department for Work and Pension (DWP) spent £154m in 2006-07 to identify an estimated £106m of fraudulent claims after examining six of the most important counter-fraud activities for their cost effectiveness.
NAO found the department had cut estimated benefit fraud from £2bn to £800m a year [...]
CCH have issued a press release, which seems to have been posted in full on AccountingWEB, saying (in part):
HMRC has raised £415.3 million through investigations into business self-assessment forms over the past year, a 35% increase on last year when it netted £308 million in additional tax, interest and penalties, according to calculations made by [...]
Hansard reports the following:
Mr. Austin Mitchell: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what his Department’s estimate of the tax gap is; and what model his Department uses to estimate the gap. [175527]
Jane Kennedy: HM Revenue and Customs do not produce estimates for the total tax gap. The most recent estimate of the indirect tax [...]
Also filed in
|
|
Vanessa Houlder has a tax article on the front page of the FT today. In it she reports that one third of the UK’s 700 largest companies do not pay tax.
I’m not surprised. I drew attention to this in ‘Mind the Tax Gap’. There are several reason, some of which I discussed with Vanessa last [...]
The Guardian is doing well with its blogs today. Seamus Milne has a great one on the growing poverty gap in the UK. As he notes:
Only when the government begins to shift away from free market orthodoxy can the underlying trend to greater inequality be reversed.
Unfortunately, all the signs are that little of any of [...]
Accountancy Age has reported that:
The government should release its estimates of the tax gap to make tax avoidance and evasion less socially acceptable, the taxman has been told.
Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, said: ‘If the public realised the extent to which tax evasion is a drain on the economy, it could create an atmosphere in [...]
Also filed in
|
|
