The very fact that videos like this can be and are made is some indication of the change in tax culture over the last decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F96svyx84iE
Of course I am biased: I am a director of the Fair Tax Mark.
What I wish there could be is a change in attitude towards tax abuse at HMRC.
There can be little doubt that HMRC's work on the tax gap was prepared in response to the work of Richard Brooks and myself on tax gaps from about 2006 onwards. But they have remained stuck in a time warp of denial as to the extent and nature of the problem ever since they began work on the issue, obsessively defending their work rather than seeking to reflect the scale of the issue they are facing and its changing nature.
I think that's a shame. We need HMRC to face up to this issue. It's time it did. The rest of us have come a long way. It's time they joined us on that journey.
It would help if they started talking to those creating change. Instead they remain in denial.
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A video posted on Google’s YouTube, costing Hodge nothing in hosting, bandwidth, production or marketing.
The irony of Google supposedly not contributing to the economy clearly lost on those that set out to criticise.
You know full well there is a cost to YouTube
Google is not a charity
And I contend Google seriously underplays tax in this country.
They know that too, I suggest.
Fred Obah says:
“A video posted on Google’s YouTube, costing Hodge nothing in hosting, bandwidth, production or marketing.
The irony of Google supposedly not contributing to the economy clearly lost on those that set out to criticise.
Meanwhile the establishment propaganda is pumped out, daily on the BBC at licence fee payers expense.
What warped perception pervades our corrupt society.
“There can be little doubt that HMRC’s work on the tax gap was prepared in response to the work of Richard Brooks and myself on tax gaps from about 2006”
Little doubt except that HMRC first published figures for their estimate of the tax gap alongside the pre budget report in 2001.
My understanding of chronology is that 2001 came before 2006.
Is my understanding at fault? Or is your claim wrong?
Regular reporting began in 2010
You are ignoring that fact
The only person ignoring facts is you.
Trying to claim HMRC’s work on the tax gap was prepared because of you writing in 2006 when HMRC first published tax gap figures in 2001 is so obviously a false claim as to be laughable.
Figures followed with every pre budget report after 2001.
You have actual achievements you could talk about. Why do you insist on making up claims that anyone in the industry would immediately know were nonsense? You undermine your own credibility. You come across as a fantasist. Why do you do it?
I confess I know of no such reports
Why do HMRC not reference them?
Why do they suggest they started in 2010 barring a couple of very early, and very limited exercise?
I am not saying you’re wrong, but as far as I klnow this is the first HMRC tax gap estimate – and it relates to 2005 and was created on 12 March 2008, and was that first trial
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/329267/measuring-tax-gap.pdf
Unless you can show otherwise maybe you’d like to make a rather large apology?
You might even like to make a donation to charity when you note my work for the TUC came out six weeks earlier and this was, without doubt, a panic response.
I cannot act as your personal Google if you cannot conduct research properly yourself.
That document you link too is an update published in March 2008. Even that references the work which started in 2001 with the large businesses units. Honestly, it seems sometimes that whenever someone shows up your ignorance you hastily Google the topic and cut and paste the first thing you find.
You have on occasion taken other people’s ideas and expanded them. CbyC reporting and tax gap work both started in the US in the late 90s. We all know that. It’s jolly commendable that you championed the ideas but you didn’t invent them. Even the Fair Tax Mark was a suggestion from on of the contributors on here.
You suggest a donation to the TUC? Ironic as you used to live off donations FROM the TUC.
Until you fell out with them and John McDonnell.
It is not an update
It was the first
It says so
There were no previous versions
Because the government tackled tax above before 2008 does not mean it measured the tax gap before then. It did not. You are wrong. As you are on all your other claims,nexcepting tax gaps. They did Bergin in the USA. But then, I never claimed otherwise.
Spreading falsehoods is not clever.
I think your necessarily brief summary on the history of the Tax Gap did not have time to do justice to the work of Richard Brooks. As he describes it in The Great British Tax Robbery he made his request in May 2005. He noted that work had been underway on this for several years before he made his request. He may have had insider knowledge but he may also have seen some explicit public references by Gus O’Donnell the year before. (Richard had then had to go via the Information Commissioner and an appeal to get his information.)
The term Tax Gap was used by Customs and Excise and they published estimates of the UK indirect tax gap from 2001. The Tax Gap approach was specifically discussed as part of the O’Donnell Review that lead to the creation of HMRC, published in March 2004
“It seems likely that the UK has a gap between tax due in law and what is paid (the ‘tax gap’) of a similar order to other developed countries. The US estimates that they have a gap amounting to almost 13% of total revenue, while Sweden estimates that it has a gap of 8%.”
A month later O’Donnell repeated this to the Treasury Select Committee. He also said a “a lot of work has been done in Customs to work out the VAT gap, the difference between what we collect and the theoretical yield. At the moment we are at something like 88% of the theoretical yield, we moved up from 86% on VAT. The 12% from 88 to 100 is 12 billion roughly. Big numbers.”
In 2005 HMRC signed a Public Service Agreement (with Red Dawn). They certainly seem to be measuring at least something by then as the PSA required
“Objective I: Improve the extent to which individuals and businesses pay the amount of tax due and receive the credits and payments to which they are entitled.
1. By 2007-08, reduce the scale of VAT losses to no more than 11 per cent of the theoretical liability.
2. By 2007-08:
Reduce the illicit market share for cigarettes to no more than 13 per cent.
Reduce the illicit market share for spirits by at least a half.
Hold the illicit market share for oils in England, Scotland and Wales at no more than 2 per cent.
3. PSA Target 3: By 2007-08, reduce underpayment of direct tax and National Insurance Contributions due by at least £3.5 billion a year.”
Thanks Ian
I explicitly acknowledged Richard’s role
And for the rest, thanks for confirming that I am right on the publication history. I was not in any way privy to what was happening in HMRC
What I do know is that the March 2008 publication appeared in response to the TUC’s ‘The Missing Billions’ published in early Feb 2008.
Richard
As for