{"id":15636,"date":"2012-05-18T16:16:43","date_gmt":"2012-05-18T15:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=15636"},"modified":"2012-05-18T16:16:43","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T15:16:43","slug":"tax-evasion-why-hmrcs-estimates-are-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/05\/18\/tax-evasion-why-hmrcs-estimates-are-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Tax evasion &#8211; why HMRC&#8217;s estimates are wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>HMRC dedicate a lot of time <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/cm201213\/cmselect\/cmtreasy\/124\/12405.htm#a1\" target=\"_blank\">in their response to my work on the tax gap <\/a>saying why my estimate of tax evasion\u00a0might\u00a0be wrong. What they fail to acknowledge are the very obvious deficiencies in their own work, which they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hmrc.gov.uk\/stats\/measuring-tax-gaps.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">have admitted\u00a0elsewhere in 2009<\/a>, saying (page 22):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>At present tax gap estimates are available for the main sources of revenue loss in Income Tax, National Insurance Contributions, Capital Gains Tax and Corporation Tax.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Direct tax gap estimates are produced using \u201cbottom-up\u201d methods. This means that components of the tax gap are estimated using departmental sources, such as surveys, administrative and operational data. The bottom-up method is less comprehensive than the top-down method used for indirect tax gap estimates because by its nature much of the gap arises from activities that are deliberately concealed. In addition because the bottom-up methods are based on compliance activity which can, in some cases, take years to complete the resulting tax gap estimates typically apply to earlier periods than those from the top-down methods.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>They neither admit this to parliament, or\u00a0acknowledge\u00a0that my work overcomes these\u00a0deficiencies. Instead they seek to dismiss it on grounds that are spurious, as I will show when I have time. But its the sheer dishonesty of their not admitting their own work is\u00a0seriously\u00a0deficient when they know that to be true that annoys me right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HMRC dedicate a lot of time in their response to my work on the tax gap saying why my estimate of tax evasion\u00a0might\u00a0be wrong. What<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/05\/18\/tax-evasion-why-hmrcs-estimates-are-wrong\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-evasion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}