Ordinary taxpayers believe that a \u201ctwo-tier\u201d tax system is squeezing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) while large companies and high net worth individuals (HNWIs) are getting away with not paying up, according to MPs.<\/p>\n
The comments follow a report from the National Audit Office (NAO) published in November, which suggested that a specialist HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) HNWI unit was chasing approximately \u00a32billion in potentially unpaid taxes thought to be owed by some of Britain\u2019s wealthiest people.<\/p>\n
According to the spending watchdog\u2019s report, more than \u00a31bn of this alleged unpaid tax was believed to be linked to tax avoidance schemes.<\/p>\n
Conservative MP Charlie Elphicke among others have criticised the Revenue for \u2018going after the minnows while big fish swim away\u2019, according to reports.<\/p>\n
Mr Elphicke has said: \u201cThe number of high net worth taxpayers has risen from 5,900 to about 6,500, so there’s more rich people and yet over the time the tax take seems to have fallen by \u00a31 billion.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy constituents would say to me that it doesn’t look like this unit has been very successful. What do I say to them?\u201d<\/p>\n
In response to Mr Elphicke\u2019s comments, HMRC chief executive Jon Thompson said: \u201cWell, the answer to that is that if it wasn’t for spending \u00a314.5 million on this unit you would not have received \u00a3416 million worth of compliance yield last year. That’s the answer to that\u201d.<\/p>\n
HMRC insists that it is taking a tougher stance on compliance into 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ordinary taxpayers believe that a \u201ctwo-tier\u201d tax system is squeezing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) while large companies and high net worth individuals (HNWIs) are getting away with not paying up, according to MPs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1630"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1631,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1630\/revisions\/1631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}