Seemingly the Treasury was "surprised" to learn that £10.9 billion of unpaid tax had been written off by HMRC in 2009/10.
PAC expressed "surprise" at the Treasury's "surprise":
"We were surprised to find that did not have a grip on trends in some key areas of risk or plans for managing them."
I must admit to being "surprised" as well, given that the Treasury is meant to have a grip on HMRC and things financial.
The Treasury spokesman said:
"HMRC collects almost all tax debt and write-offs are relatively low.
What's more, around 90% of those write-offs are due to insolvency where further debt pursuit is actually barred by law."
Anyone else care to express "surprise"?
Tax does have to be taxing.
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Bit of a non story, I think, TBH. HMRC writes off debt incurred by insolvent businesses / individuals ? I wonder what else they could do with it ? Since most of HMRCs policy making function was taken back by the Treasury, I find it strange that they are saying they were unaware of this............
ReplyDeleteMethinks the Treasury is telling porkies here.
DeleteBANG!
ReplyDeleteI am surprised they even have the ability to know how much they haven't collected. Is this included in HMRC's mythical tax gap figure?
ReplyDeleteThis figure of £10.9bn was in the HMRC Annual Accounts for 2009/10, so should not really be 'news'. It's also less than the 2008/9 figure and is not money written off, it's a provision.
ReplyDeleteOh, that makes everything alright then...
DeleteI suspect people must be thinking HMRC should spend more trying to collect small PAYE underpayments than it would ever hope to gain by pursuing them.
DeleteFine then, let's put that forward shall we?