{"id":26533,"date":"2014-10-27T09:38:55","date_gmt":"2014-10-27T09:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=26533"},"modified":"2014-10-27T14:28:12","modified_gmt":"2014-10-27T14:28:12","slug":"the-eu-vat-gap-estimate-for-the-uk-is-1-9-billion-more-than-the-uk-admits-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/10\/27\/the-eu-vat-gap-estimate-for-the-uk-is-1-9-billion-more-than-the-uk-admits-to\/","title":{"rendered":"The EU VAT gap estimate for the UK is \u00c2\u00a31 billion more than the UK admits to"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/taxation_customs\/resources\/documents\/common\/publications\/studies\/vat_gap2012.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">EU published new VAT gap data last week<\/a> for all 28 member states.<\/p>\n<p>The UK summary is here (click the image for a bigger version):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screen-Shot-2014-10-27-at-09.28.57.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-26534\" src=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screen-Shot-2014-10-27-at-09.28.57.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2014-10-27 at 09.28.57\" width=\"600\" height=\"344\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screen-Shot-2014-10-27-at-09.28.57.png 963w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screen-Shot-2014-10-27-at-09.28.57-300x171.png 300w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screen-Shot-2014-10-27-at-09.28.57-523x300.png 523w, https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Screen-Shot-2014-10-27-at-09.28.57-200x114.png 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The EU think that in 2012 the UK VAT gap was 10.4% of total potential VAT payable. At <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hmrc.gov.uk\/exrate\/european-union.htm\" target=\"_blank\">2012 exchange rates<\/a> the value was \u00a313,428 million (\u00a313.4 billion). The EU says this is very close to the UK estimate.<\/p>\n<p>There's just one problem with that claim: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/uploads\/system\/uploads\/attachment_data\/file\/364009\/4382_Measuring_Tax_Gaps_2014_IW_v4B_accessible_20141014.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">the latest UK estimate of the VAT gap <\/a>is for 2012-13 (so near enough the same period) and is for a gap of 10.9% at a cost of \u00a312.4 billion. I don't think \u00a313.4 billion is close to \u00a312.4 billion: it is \u00a31 billion.<\/p>\n<p>One of these estimates is better than the other. I know which I am inclined to believe because it was not prepared by the tax authority publishing it, and that's precisely <a title=\"Why haven\u2019t we got an Office for Tax Responsibility?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/10\/21\/why-havent-we-got-an-office-for-tax-responsibility\/\">why I say HMRC should not be responsible for monitoring the tax gap<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Note: Updated at 14.30 on 27 October because an incorrect exchange rate was used in the first version<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The EU published new VAT gap data last week for all 28 member states. The UK summary is here (click the image for a bigger<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/10\/27\/the-eu-vat-gap-estimate-for-the-uk-is-1-9-billion-more-than-the-uk-admits-to\/\"><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":[44,50,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-tax-gap","category-vat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26533","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=26533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}