by Claire Aston | Feb 26, 2024
Following our recent article on customer service, the other side of the coin in terms of HMRC effectiveness relates to its compliance activity. Current Tax Gap is 4.8%, or £36bn for 2021/22 HMRC neither resourced nor tasked to reduce the Tax Gap below its current...
by Claire Aston | Feb 21, 2024
It’s good to see national newspapers showing an interest in HMRC performance data and raising important issues about properly funding our tax authority. However, a recent article in The Guardian about trends in case numbers opened by a niche HMRC team requires a bit...
by Claire Aston | Feb 13, 2024
3.8m tax returns outstanding a week before the deadline Taxpayers spent 6 million hours waiting on the phone in 2022-23 And 2 million hours waiting on the phone in first 8 months of 2023-24 22 minutes average wait time for HMRC to answer calls this year £100m+...
by Claire Aston | Jan 8, 2024
Misunderstandings and confusing media coverage last week have created uncertainty about how transactions made via online platforms such as Vinted, Ebay and Airbnb should be taxed. Given TaxWatch has long campaigned on issues of tax compliance and administration, we...
by Claire Aston | Dec 14, 2023
We’ve written for many years about the UK’s stubbornly high tax gap. This is the amount of tax that should have been paid if businesses and individuals had complied with all applicable tax legislation, but hasn’t been. The figure is estimated by HMRC for each tax...