{"id":74963,"date":"2024-04-09T17:25:44","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T16:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=74963"},"modified":"2024-04-09T17:25:44","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T16:25:44","slug":"labour-should-establish-an-independent-office-for-tax-responsibility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/04\/09\/labour-should-establish-an-independent-office-for-tax-responsibility\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00a0Labour\u00a0should establish an independent office for tax responsibility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am quoted by Larry Elliott <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2024\/apr\/09\/how-realistic-labour-aspiration-cut-tax-gap-5bn-rachel-reeves\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">in the Guardian<\/a> this afternoon on the tax gap:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"dcr-p5n9h4\">The accountant and tax expert Richard Murphy says: \u201cReeves could raise billions by closing the tax gap, but not by looking offshore to find it. The tax gap is in the cities, towns and villages of the UK where small businesses aren\u2019t paying large amounts of what they owe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-p5n9h4\">\u201cIf she wants to collect that money \u2013 and support honest business by doing so \u2013 then she needs to reopen the UK\u2019s local tax offices and put VAT inspectors back on the road, checking that business really pay. Nothing else can work.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-p5n9h4\">Murphy believes HMRC is under-estimating the size of the tax gap, which he says could be as high as \u00a390bn. He thinks\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/labour\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\">Labour<\/a>\u00a0should establish an independent office for tax responsibility to monitor delivery and ensure HMRC doesn\u2019t \u201cmark its own homework\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The overall opinion that Larry finds from the interviews he did? That Reeves is being an optimist, although the reasons vary. But no one seems to doubt that more investment in HM Revenue &amp; Customs is necessary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am quoted by Larry Elliott in the Guardian this afternoon on the tax gap: The accountant and tax expert Richard Murphy says: \u201cReeves could<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2024\/04\/09\/labour-should-establish-an-independent-office-for-tax-responsibility\/\"><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":[118,156,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-labour","category-office-for-tax-responsibility","category-tax-gap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74963","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=74963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74964,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74963\/revisions\/74964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}