The FT has a 'long read' article this morning entitled
The prospect of [new laws] also prompts concerns about who the targets might be. “If you ask people [in HMRC's criminal investigations unit] who they want to prosecute, Joe the plumber or captains of industry, they will always say captains of industry,” says Ray McCann, a former senior tax inspector who is now a tax adviser at New Quadrant Partners. “But the scale of that task is monumental.”
The authorities tend to attempt “a generational case of a big target” but “these things are just so enormously resource-intensive that the Revenue just don't have the staff to do it, and a jury needs to be convinced”. As a result, Mr McCann says, “the Revenue has always picked and will always pick on softer targets where fraud may be easier to prove”.
On this occasion I am sure Ray is right: it does not matter what new laws you have unless you are willing to invest serious new money in HMRC. Otherwise they are not going to have the resources to make the changes that are needed.
And that I know of only one politician is, right now, talking about giving them those resources. I wish more were. Perhaps the current discussion will win the wider support that is needed but it remains the case at present that George Osborne thinks he can collect new tax without investing real resources in HMRC. I have to say that I quite simply disagree.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Richard,
Having worked inside a government department, perhaps I can offer the following.
It’s not a matter of resources. For any sensible amount of resources, HMRC ( or any other department ) will always go after the small fry.
If you have a case load of 30 cases, 15 of which are easy, 10 are so-so and 5 are difficult, investigative jobs, then the 15 easy ones will get done first, then maybe a few of the so-so ones.
By the time you have these, lets say 20, cases resolved, another 20 have hit your desk, meaning you can again pick off the easy ones.
This is how it happens.
The end results is you can say ‘Look! We had 20 successful prosecutions’ rather than ‘Oh dear, we had one large, expensive prosecution. That failed’.
Human nature. And how it works in practice.
But when the low flying cases are done there is a need to continue
Richard,
I think Darren’s point is that, once the low flying cases are complete, there are more to replace them and those new cases tend to be addressed before the difficult ones even though the 5 difficult ones in his example may have been around for some time. I think resources is one issue but a move away from the obsession with targets is also needed otherwise the temptation will always be to deal with the simplest cases first.