{"id":281,"date":"2006-12-08T16:12:39","date_gmt":"2006-12-08T14:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2006\/12\/08\/ho-w-much-does-tax-evasion-cost-the-uk-start-at-%c2%a375-billion\/"},"modified":"2006-12-08T20:27:51","modified_gmt":"2006-12-08T18:27:51","slug":"ho-w-much-does-tax-evasion-cost-the-uk-start-at-%c2%a375-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2006\/12\/08\/ho-w-much-does-tax-evasion-cost-the-uk-start-at-%c2%a375-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"How much does tax evasion cost the UK? Start at \u00c2\u00a375 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was asked this question today. Let me give a current estimate.<\/p>\n<p>According to reports in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.timesonline.co.uk\/article\/0,,2-2491044,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Times yesterday<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The VAT gap - the difference between how much should be collected and how much was - rose to 14.5 per cent last year, the first increase since 2002.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Now VAT fraud has increased because of carousel activity, but let's be clear, the rate was about 17% at the turn of the century, so the current figure is an improvement. This happens to be the only 'evasion estimate' HMRC publish. I think it's low. My own <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxjustice.net\/cms\/upload\/pdf\/Mind_the_Tax_Gap_-_final_-_15_Jan_2006.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Tax Gap<\/a> estimates are higher at up to 24% for corporation tax. I think that's likely. A top line error on VAT is likely to give rise to a bigger error on the bottom line, by definition. But let's live with 14.5%.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/prebudget2006.treasury.gov.uk\/pbr06_leaflet.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">pre-Budget Report<\/a> suggests current year income (2006-07) should be \u00a3518 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Take 14.5% of \u00a3518 billion and the resulting cost of evasion is not less than \u00a375 billion. That's my current base line estimate. I expect that's conservative.<\/p>\n<p>Add avoidance onto that (minimum\u00a310 billion according to HMRC) and you can see why we concentrate on this issue. Combined that's more than the whole UK education budget - which seems to be Gordon Brown's focus for his premiership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was asked this question today. Let me give a current estimate. According to reports in The Times yesterday: The VAT gap &#8211; the difference<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2006\/12\/08\/ho-w-much-does-tax-evasion-cost-the-uk-start-at-%c2%a375-billion\/\"><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":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","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=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}