This report came from AccountingWeb, just before Christmas:
HMRC's large-business service, which deals with the tax affairs of the UK's 770 largest companies, had 2,314 unresolved enquiries into the companies' tax affairs on March 31, according to figures released to Accounting WEB under the Freedom of Information Act.
Around one third (737) of the unresolved enquiries at the large-business service are more than three years old.
The unresolved enquiries - which HMRC calls "open risks" and includes corporation tax, VAT and national insurance - are down slightly from 2012 (2,375) but up from 2011 (2,721).
The evidence remains clear that HMRC are on the back foot on investigation cases and the reasons is obvious. They do not have enough staff, let alone enough experienced staff, to do the routine work in the department. Which in turn means that they have almost no resource at all to take on more complex cases of the sort the Public Accounts Committee and the public would wish them to address.
The result is that big business wins again.
And the rest of us lose.
Without a change in policy that will be a recurring feature of 2014, and there's no change in policy in sight, so this issue is bound to come up again, and again, and again this year whether or not I do any work for PCS on it, or not (and that's not certain, as yet).
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I have no idea what these figures mean (and without having registered for accounting web doubt they do either). Certainly not that all 770 large companies have about 3 investigations going, one of them 3 years old!
Please let’s not call for a shorter elapsed time for HMRC enquiries. Complex cases take time to win. Elapsed time targets engender a perverse incentive to close them prematurely by agreement by offering not to pursue all that is due. This could well have been David Hartnett’s motive when he attracted criticism by stepping in and closing an old case.
Your assertion that Large Business Service is under staffed is correct, but I don’t think these figures provide evidence one way or the other.
It is impossible to ascertain Hartnett’s true motives when he stepped in and closed an old case. However, I would like though to reassure you that when viewed from the public arena,the deals struck stink!
I’d have much preferred it if Hartnett had taken longer to conclude the deal with Goldman Sachs. Not asking a “bank” to pay “interest” on a “debt” sucks. There again political motives are in play and cheap money is be thrown at the banksters with a combination of QE and minimal interest rates!
“Your assertion that Large Business Service is under staffed is correct……”
Don’t you think this just might be by design?
Not surprised at all. The question is, what to do about it?
Not to just bleat about it, but a sustained campaign.
Happy New Year
And to you