The Fair Tax Mark tweeted yesterday:
Hmmm🤔
HMRC's Annual Report just out.
Curious how the UK's official "Tax Gap" stays pretty much flat year-in year-out, but HMRC say in this publication that the compliance yield they realise leaps every year: up £13.3bn (64%), to £34bn, since 2012-13.
The explanation is obvious, of course. As I have long suggested, the tax gap is seriously understated because it is very largely estimated in way that guarantees that.
And as I have also long stated the compliance yield is overstated by including exaggerated claims of tax saved in future years that no one knows would have arisen.
The result is this absurdity.
I hope a new HMRC chief executive might sort both or they will have to soon declare themselves redundant for over-collecting tax, when that is emphatically not true.
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Please forgive this comment’s oblique connection to the thread; I am hanging it by the thread of ‘statistical’ salience.
May I suggest reading Margaret Cuthbert’s – a well-informed economist and statistician – article in today’s ‘National’, titled ‘Why Scotland needs better trade statistics’. It is further confirmation (if any were needed) on just how badly informed we are on critical matters central to the functioning of Scotland’s economy. This is not trivial. I invite all open-minded people to consider carefully why this should be the case.
I am entirely in agreement with Margaret
@ Richard
If you have time, I would love to read our thoughts on this article on the BBC titled – Would you pay less tax if you lived abroad?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48988052?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business&link_location=live-reporting-story
Sorry
I am really in holiday mode