The Mail has reported that a carpenter in Hull has been convicted of defrauding HMRC by retrospecively adjusting his on line tax returns to claim tax refunds of money he was not due. As they say:
Mitton then tried to reclaim £126,181 in 'overpaid' tax in eight months last year and managed to get £88,741 back.
And as they add:
It is lawful for people to submit amendments, taking into account expenses and income, which are then checked by the tax office.
The sting is, however, in the tail of the report:
But the court heard that checks are becoming more infrequent because of a lack of resources.
Severe cuts at HMRC forced 14 offices to close and almost 700 staff members asked to take voluntary redundancy last year.
Prosecutor Joanne Jenkins told the court: 'The position is that HM Revenue and Customs operate on a "pay now, check later" basis.
'Amendments are checked later, if there are any concerns. I am told that the checking happens more and more infrequently due to a lack of resources.'
Ms Jenkins said she had been informed this sort of fraud 'is happening and has happened before' and added: 'I would hope that cases like these show the need to check.'
I added the emphasis.
And I am also told that these checks are now incredibly rare.
In effect HMRC is laying itself wide open to abuse.
Should anyone really be surprised we have a massive tax gap?
And in that case why should anyone really be surprised that I think it worth investing more in staff at HMRC?
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Even basic checks of tax computations to Accounts are not being done.
It is now getting ridiculous. I had assumed that something had been built in to the software to provide these checks.
I’m not so sure now. To some HMRC must seem like an ATM machine.
The average gap between VAT inspections in East Anglia is now 300 years
(Possible because most will never, ever, have one)
Isn’t that why there was an announcement in the summer budget about increasing HMRC resources for investigation and enforcing compliance?
That merely cancelled cuts