The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales published an article this week in which they noted:
Since 10 July 2023, an HMRC taskforce has been focusing on clearing older post.
They add:
HMRC is ... seeking to reduce post that is outstanding for the last 10-12 and 6-9 months. However, the agent account manager service is currently limited to post that is outstanding for more than 12 months.
I have had to wait for more than two years for a substantive reply to a letter from HM Revenue & Customs during this decade. Covid or not, that was unacceptable.
The case for investing in HMRC and improving tax administration in this country is overwhelming, but the government is not doing it.
That is one of the many recommendations I will make on taxing wealth. Having improved legislation is inconsequential if the tax administration is so overwhelmed that it cannot enforce it.
Or is that inability the government's aim? Do they not want revenue?
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The easiest way for a neoliberal government to reduce taxes and costs without drawing media or political attention to its purpose, and the further scope given to bad actors, is to reduce its own investment in enforcement or regulation of existing taxes; HMRC for example. Simple.
The underfunding of the IRS is an even more obvious example.
All the testicular material about taxes just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that we cannot afford things and solve our problems.
So in answer to your last question, the answer is undoubtedly ‘No’.
The Government don’t want revenue because they are ideologically opposed to it anyway. To them it’s theft. We vote people in who do not believe in the State.
They don’t want revenue – and proactively avoid increasing it – to help create the excuse that we can’t afford a better this and that. This causes chaos and for certain twisted mindset – opportunity.
They don’t want revenue because they want to create new markets for rich rentiers in areas where they should not exist but where profit is to be made despite what we see in already well established privatisations.
They don’t want taxes because the money can fund their political campaigns and sustain them instead.
It’s all wrapped up very nicely – especially for Capital who are firmly in charge and our political parties seem to accept that.
This is how you maintain the status quo – be depriving something of resources. This is also how you exercise (and abuse) power.
There are many good reasons to agree with you.
Underfunded, under-resourced and a totally stressed out workforce sums up all the public sector.
Add in an incompetent senior management focussed on pleasing its political masters rather than listening to its workforce and you have the perfect recipe for corruption and catastrophic failure.
And all the time we are still being governed by the Tory Blob of Party, City, Media and “Think Tanks” who all hailed the moronic Truss policies as the solution to all Britain’s problems.
Demonstrating that not only do they not understand anything about economics but also they do not even understand how the British economy works despite having spent 45 years rigging it entirely for their own benefit.
I have been trying to settle a capital gains tax liability for well over a year. It seems unfair to me that the taxpayer is obliged under threat of penalties to comply with legal obligations within strictly defined time periods and HMRC can take as long as they like with impunity. Didn’t even get an acknowledgement of materials submitted until the third or fourth time (am no longer in the UK and dealing with HMRC by mail). It is impossible to get through to anyone by phone – – one gets disconnected automatically after half an hour. Clearly, HMRC is seriously under-resourced.
Good luck
And agreed
HMRC is over-burdened. As evidence consider the size of the so-called tax code which is an all time high.
And serious people want to add to it.
There is widespread belief in government’s ability, just not in the one we’ve got. It’s like believing in Father Christmas while never getting any presents you want.
I knew an idiot would creep pout of the woodwork
The hardest tax system to regulate is the line without much legislation – because no line knows nowhere they stand
That is why Jersey relies on one of the most draconian of anti-avoidance rules (s134A of its tax code) effectively allowing tax on the whim of an inspector
Of course, I suspect that is what you wild like
I always say one of the most startling statistics I have seen is that there are over 3000 civil servants tasked with recovering benefit fraud every year which amounts to about £3bn a year. Not insubstantial, but I suspect a lot of it is just overpayments and misallocation, considering there are a fair amount of benefits unclaimed due to the complexity of the benefit system it seems like a miniscule amount (in terms of overall government spending) that it just seems to punitively punish the poor.
There are around 300 civil servants dedicated to recovering tax fraud/evasion/avoidance, to the tune of £100bn, not sure if that’s every year or total.
But it does show where the government is on priorities.
I do not know what your source is, Mr Shakesby; but a very well made illustrative point.
Only 300 in HMRC tasked with countering fraud, evasion and avoidance? Sorry, but that’s just garbage. It’s exponentially more than that, and you shouldn’t be coming out with such a ludicrous under-estimate. And before anyone accuses me of being an apologist, Richard’s basic premise in this thread, that HMRC is hideously under-resourced, is of course true.
I agree
300 is far too low
The last time I had substantive dealings with HMRC (Inland Revenue as was) was 1985. Back then, there was even an IR office in Bridgend. Correspondence, me – them was brisk and usually took one/two weeks to turn around (I still have the letters – yes, I know, pathetic). I appreciate that circa 40 years on, this may seem a bit of a fantasy – but it used to happen, the prompt settlement of tax claims (& yes they settled in my favour 🙂 ). This begs the question: what has happened in 40 years?
The situation is similar to that for justice in the UK; slow and very expensive (legal aid has evaporated) and the elimination of large numbers of courts (must cuts costs!). We have seen how this plays out with various miscarriages of justice and a failure of the police to even investigate most crimes of direct concern to Uk serfs, such as rape.
Mr Shakesby notes that gov’ focus/action is on chasing benefit cheats (don’t vote vile-tory or don’t vote), not tax cheats (for the most part do vote vile tory). A purely political decision (which ignores the economics).
Ex-PM Mendacious Fatberg, talked about the EU giving the Uk a “punishment beating” re Brexit. Given the above it would seem that the only ones indulging in such actions are the vile-tories (declining justice for most, and an intentionally disfunctional tax system). Perhaps the vile tories are extending the idea that if “a good beating never did me any harm” (at the public schools that so many of them attended) it should also happen to UK serfs that did not “benefit” from such an education.
When I began in practice if there were problems the local District Inspector (with whom I got on well, professionally) and I talked about it to solve most issues. That worked. He also knew all the bent accountants in his patch. He knew we weren’t.
When HMRC came out with its vanity project of having no more than 15 super-efficient uber-offices in the UK, the concrete proposals being revealed late in 2015, I pointed out to my trades union colleagues that the network of tax offices in sleepy little market towns and equally sleepy seaside resorts wasn’t necessarily broken; and that our most seminal tax case on avoidance, Ramsay, had begun with an unsolicited letter to the District Inspector of just such a district, Gainsborough.
Of course, that letter would these days have been scanned on to the department’s systems, and not been referred to anybody with sufficient training to understand what it was about…
Totally agree. The tax system is being willfully undermined.
The disincentive for evasion, let alone avoidance, is diminishing fast. Student debt is collected more efficiently than taxes (hard though that might be to believe for anyone who has had anything to do with the Student Loans system).
And then we have the Covid loans debacle..
More money – quite a lot more – has been allocated to the DWP for “tackling fraud” than has been given to HMRC to do the same. The DWP is intending to use new powers (white paper stage) of “Stop, Search and Seize”, giving it the same powers as Customs Officers to enter homes, arrest people and search their houses. The DWP also intends to order banks to provide access to UK bank accounts to ensure no one is hiding money. All this to recover trifling sums from people on Universal Credit. More than £16,000 in savings and claiming benefits? You’re nicked, mate.
The figures on the DWP website for fraud also include overpayments by DWP staff – errors. It is not possible to separate the amounts, as fraud and error are lumped together.
Given that the total amount lost to fraud and error is a tiny fraction of the total revenue lost to the UK from tax evasion and offshoring, I wonder why the Government is giving the DWP so much more money than it is giving HMRC to investigate fraud? (Rhetorical question)