Margaret Hodge Makes a Fool of Herself

Absolutely outrageous that Facebook's UK tax bill is 0.62% of their revenue here; on an income of £1.2 billion they really should be paying much more than £7.4 million.

— Margaret Hodge (@margarethodge) October 8, 2018

There is precious little chance of HMRC being made to improve its performance if politicians are as woefully ignorant of the basics of finance as Hodge!

Tax does have to be taxing.

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Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

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What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

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Avoidance Mass Debate

The Speaker has approved an application made by @margarethodge for an emergency debate on tax avoidance - the debate will take place tomorrow and will last up to 2 hours

— House of Commons (@HouseofCommons) November 13, 2017

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



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Hodge Doesn't Understand Tax

"It's not that we want to decide the tax, we just want to understand it" says @margarethodge at the @taxinparliament #TrustinHMRC seminar

— ACCA Taxation (@ACCATaxation) November 16, 2016

Welcome to our world Margaret!


Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

HMRC Called To Account

The book that many of you have been talking about over the past few days, Margaret Hodge's Called To Account: How Corporate Bad Behaviour and Government Waste Combine to Cost Us Millions (an account of her years as chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) between 2010 and 2015) has been reviewed by Chris Harmer on the LSE website.

As Trollope once said:

"It was too notorious that the civil service was filled by the family fools of the aristocracy and middle classes, and that any family, who had no fool to send, sent in lieu thereof, some invalid past hope. Thus the service had become a hospital for incurables and idiots."

Nothing changes!

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Odds On Lin Homer's Replacement

AccountancyAge and William Hill have produced a list of the latest odds on the potential candidates to replace Homer.

On that subject, has anyone seen the job advertised yet?

Edward Troup - 2/1

Our front-runner currently serves as HMRC's tax assurance commissioner and second permanent secretary so on paper looks like he has the credentials.
His job involves reporting directly to Lin Homer and is responsible for shaping tax policy and strategy. Before HMRC, Troup was a partner at international law firm Simmons and Simmons, so will have the legal know-how at his disposal if he's ever called into a PAC hearing if he gets the top job.

Jim Harra - 5/2

Harra has worked his way up the ranks at HMRC, beginning his career in the Inland Revenue as an inspector of taxes in 1984. In 2009, Harra was appointed director of corporation tax and VAT and has previously suggested that it's unrealistic to expect multinational firms to pay as much as other businesses, something which sparked outrage in the wake of Google's £130m "sweetheart payment" to the taxman.

He has a wide knowledge of tax issues, including tax avoidance and knows a lot about the inner workings of HMRC. Was inspector of taxes at the Inland Revenue (now known as HMRC since 2005) in 1984.

Andy Cole - 3/1

Director of specialist investigations at HMRC. He has overall responsibility for leading the response to HMRC's largest and most complex fraud and avoidance risks through civil means.

Margaret Hodge - 7/1

Former chair of the Public Accounts Committee and one of the chief critics of HMRC's failure to tackle tax avoidance.

Stephen Herring - 7/1

Head of taxation at the Institute of Directors' policy unit. Herring has specialised in taxation for over 30 years and, before joining the IoD in September 2013, was a partner in three global accounting firms (Grant Thornton, EY and BDO). He was appointed by the Exchequer secretary as one of the eight independent members of HM Treasury's Tax Professionals Forum.

Ian Powell - 12/1

Chairman and senior partner at Big Four accounting firm PwC, he is stepping down as PwC chairman later this year.

John Whiting - 12/1

Tax director of the Office of Tax simplification. Until 2013 he was the tax policy director of the CIoT; previously, he was a tax partner at PwC.

Steve Lewis - 500/1

Coffee shop owner from Crickhowell and star of The Town That Took on the Taxman, has his own campaign to become CEO of HMRC. When he spoke to Accountancy Age, he gave himself 1000/1 odds.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Hodge Stands Down From PAC

Margaret "Enver" Hodge is to stand down from chairing PAC.

As such the role is up for grabs (as is tradition) for a longstanding MP in the main opposition party.

The Guardian lists some names in the frame:

- Meg Hillier, who was a member of the committee under Hodge;
- John Healey, the former housing minister;
- Helen Goodman, the shadow minister for welfare reform under Ed Miliband; and
- Gisela Stuart, who called for a grand coalition with the Tories in the event of a hung parliament.

Time will tell who gets it, and how effective he/she will be.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



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The Joys of Low Hanging Fruit - SME's Are Not Treated Equally

As per AccountingWeb, PAC pushed HMRC this week on its treatment of SME's.

"After Hartnett, Edward Troup appeared before the committee. In his opening statement, Troup heralded the HMRC’s success in lifting the veil on Swiss banking secrecy.

“In the early 2000’s banking secrecy seemed impregnable, the idea that this secrecy could be breached was unthinkable,” said Troup. “From 2018, we will get information from Swiss banks automatically, not just on command.”

“And what are you doing now?” asked Hodge, cutting Troup short. “It’s always the future; I’m interested in the now.”

“We have quintupled the number of prosecutions for tax evasion over the last five years,” said Troup.
“How many were small businesses?” asked Hodge. “What we’re interested in is equality of treatment, SMEs aren’t treated equally.”

In reply, Troup said that he wouldn’t go into operational detail and that it was “perception” that SMEs are treated differently from large enterprises.

This drew the ire of MP Richard Bacon. “It is not merely a perception – it’s a fact that the way small enterprises are treated is different,” he said. “For you to sit here and claim that it’s perception makes you look rather out of touch.”

Troup remained defiant, saying that HMRC has to "put some effort into enforcing compliance among SMEs, they represent £15.1 bn of our tax yield"."

In a nutshell, SME's are low hanging fruit that are easy targets. Hence HMRC uses them to hide its general ineptitude elsewhere.

Whilst it is all well and good to give Troup and HMRC a public dressing down, what will be the tangible outcomes wrt HMRC's treatment of SME's.

None I fear!

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

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What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Hodge vs Hartnett

In what promises to be a cracking finale to this season's PAC, it's Hodge v Hartnett. Monday 23 March, 3.15pm. http://t.co/DtTfFe8v4v

— Andrew Brooks (@taxbod) March 21, 2015

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Tax Loopholes

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has criticised Britain's 1,128 tax reliefs.

For why?

In PAC's view they are a £100BN recipe for abuse, avoidance and evasion.

PAC notes that government departments are struggling to cope with the growing demands of managing the ballooning number of them.

One relief, highlighted by Margaret Hodge, is late-night taxi relief which exempts employees who are supplied with them from facing income tax charges for "benefits in kind".

Ms Hodge said that rather than helping shift workers it had ended up benefiting the often expansively paid employees of big law and accountancy firms. This, she said (according to The Independent), made it "hard to justify".

Ms Hodge said:

"Much more radical simplification of the tax system is required if we are to get to grips with aggressive tax avoidance.

If the Government chooses to spend £100bn on tax reliefs, at a time of austerity, this expenditure should be considered in the same way as spending programmes. Many tax reliefs are introduced without clear objectives and are not evaluated as fully."

I agree that the tax system needs to be simplified, I am sure that taxpayers (both staff of HMRC and those not employed by HMRC) would agree on that point.

However, the legislation is passed by our "respected" MPs who are now criticising the system that they created.

Maybe PAC and others who criticise the system would care to remember that it is they who created it in the first place!

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Stemcor In Distress

According to the Guardian, Margaret Hodge will be suffering a drop in income as Stemcor seems to have hit the financial rocks:

"It ran up debts of more than $1bn (£620m) with a host of banks through its revolving credit facilities. But the business, which suffered massive losses in its international trading division, has struggled to service the loans.

The banks agreed to a number of standstill deals on repayments throughout this year and are close to launching a major restructuring, with a host of its businesses to be sold around the world.....

In the meantime, some bankers to the company have been selling their debt to vulture funds led by the Manhattan billionaire Leon Black’s Apollo at as little as 30 cents for $1 worth of loan.

Companies like Apollo buy up debt cheaply and demand dramatic change to the company to increase the value of the loan. Others thought to be buying into Stemcor’s “distressed debt” include Australia’s Anchorage Capital Partners and London-based Duke Street."

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

NAO Spat With HMRC

I recently noted that, according to the National Audit Office, neither the Treasury nor HMRC know whether Gift Aid and other tax reliefs on donations have resulted in more income for charities.

The report has produced a wee public spat between HMRC and the NAO, which took place at a PAC hearing on the subject on 2nd December.

The Committee’s chair, Margaret Hodge, told HMRC’s chief executive Lin Homer and director of counter-avoidance David Richardson that the report showed that the link between gift aid and higher donations was “at best unproven; at worst giving to charity has actually fallen”.

This set the scene for the spat between Homer and Robert Prideaux, director at the National Audit Office, over whether the charity sector agrees that donations have risen over the 13 years since gift aid was introduced.

Homer is quoted by CivilSociety:

“We and the sector are very clear that donations have gone up, that gift aid has had a very positive effect on individual donations."

Prideaux disagreed and said that the NAO consulted the sector for its report and found “no clear evidence that donations in the round are increasing”.

“They are in absolute terms, but this might be down to demographics and population changes.

We have not said in the report that donations aren’t increasing, but there is no clear evidence that they are increasing, and the charitable sector will back this up.”

Margaret Hodge was also unconvinced, telling Homer:

“You have yet to prove that this radical change in 2000 was value for money for the £1bn that has gone to corporations and high net worth individuals as a bribe to encourage them to do more.”

Hodge asked the HMRC executives to name the ten charities that benefit most from gift aid, but Richardson said that he didn’t have that information to hand and wouldn’t name names anyway.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

HMRC Not "Particularly Feeble"

Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, was recently quoted in the Independent as saying that:

 “It is a persistent finding of my Committee that HMRC is nowhere near tough enough in cracking down on avoidance and closing loopholes. In this case they appear to have been particularly feeble.”

The specific case that she was referring to relates to a tax exemption relating to certain high interest loans, whereby the interest element is used to reduce corporation tax. This allowance or "loophole" (as per Ms Hodge) was established in the 1980's, in order to make Britain more internationally competitive.

It is estimated that this may cost the government around £500M per annum and, as such, there has been pressure to end the allowance/close the "loophole".

However, as a result of lobbying the government has chosen to continue to allow the exemption/"loophole" to remain.

Make of that what you will.

However, to call HMRC "feeble" over a government decision is simply wrong and misleading!

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

The Joy of Fags

The BBC reports that the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has claimed that the UK economy lost £1.9bn a year through tobacco smuggling, equal to 20% of all tax collected on cigarettes.

Seemingly some tobacco firms oversupply other European countries, and the surplus then enters the UK tax-free.

However, PAC also claim that HMRC was "in the dark" about how effective its enforcement strategy was even though HMRC says that it has more than halved the size of the illicit market in cigarettes.

Given this "variance" in opinions as to what the true figures are, who are we to really believe?

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Politics Before Common Sense

Tonight's Panorama "Tax, Lies and Videotape", to be shown on BBC One at 20:30 BST, will be gemusing.

It shows David Heaton, who was secretly filmed at a London conference "101 Ideas for Personal Tax Planning" a few months ago, offering tips on how to keep money "out of the chancellor's grubby mitts".

Nothing wrong with that at all, except that in today's febrile atmosphere (whipped up by sound bite politicians and the media) over tax avoidance Mr Heaton then made an unfortunate career move. Two months after the conference he then joined an HMRC panel advising HMRC and the courts about artificial and aggressive tax avoidance.

In past days such a move would not cause the bat of an eyelid. However, the political atmosphere is different and as such Mr Heaton has resigned from his HMRC role.

The BBC reports that Mr Heaton was caught on camera describing a maternity scheme he called the Bump Plan.

"Ninety per cent of what you pay out ends up with the employee. You can't really knock that one."

By deliberately timing bonuses to enable an increased rebate on maternity pay, the tax paid on the bonus would effectively fall from 41.8% to just 8.4%, he explained.

HMRC have stated that it would regard such a scheme as "an abuse" and would challenge anyone using it.

David Gauke said:

"Mr Heaton's statements are directly at odds with the government's approach to tackling tax avoidance, therefore it is right that Mr Heaton resigns from his position."

Margaret Hodge said she was "shocked" by Mr Heaton's comments.

"This is an absolutely classic example of where government passes a law with a particular intent and the tax advisers then abuse that and use it for a purpose that was never intended by government."

It seems to me that if HMRC wants to keep up with the real world, it should welcome people such as Mr Heaton with open arms. Unfortunately politics has come before common sense.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

HMRC's Hodge Podge Limbo

Unsurprisingly the ongoing anti avoidance soundbite campaign being waged by the politicians, and broadcast by the media, has affected HMRC.

The Telegraph reports that HMRC has over 40,000 cases of what it defines as “aggressive” tax avoidance awaiting resolution.

The so called “Margaret Hodge effect” is causing delays in resolution, as HMRC is now shying away from negotiating settlements (ie taking a practical approach). HMRC has taken a harder line in response, eschewing settlement deals in favour of challenging tax avoidance at tribunals and in court.

Bob Robinson, a senior tax manager at Grant Thornton, said:

“There are clients out there who are commercially pragmatic and if they could reach an acceptable compromise with HMRC, they would ... do so. If [HMRC showed] flexibility, they’d be able to clear up that backlog.”

Frank Haskew, head of the Tax Faculty at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, said:

“Challenging people through tribunals is very expensive and time consuming. It wouldn’t surprise me if [the backlog gets worse]. At some stage I think HMRC will need to start reaching agreements with taxpayers.”

Suffice to say, this Hodge Podge limbo will worsen as the cases continue to pile up.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Man-Marking

During a debate in the House of Commons last Thursday about HMRC David Gauke used a phrase that I have never heard in relation to tax collection, namely "man-marking".

He is quoted by The Register:

“I should explain that HMRC works, with regard to large businesses, by putting in place CRMs — customer relationship managers. Their role is essentially to man-mark the most complex and high-risk taxpayers. In recent years that approach has proved to be effective in getting money in.

HMRC secured £8bn of additional compliance yield from large businesses in 2012-13, and more than £23bn in the past three years. It is an approach that has been endorsed by the OECD.”

When asked by Margaret Hodge about why HMRC hadn’t launched any cases against internet companies such as Amazon and Google, Gauke cited the British variation of the "fifth" (ie taxpayer confidentiality) saying that there was “no way to know what action HMRC has taken with regard to individual companies”.

“One of the difficulties that HMRC has is that it is bound by taxpayer confidentiality. It cannot give a running commentary to this House on the action that it takes, but the numbers demonstrate that HMRC is effective in getting money in.

“What we do know is that it has got billions of pounds in additional yield as a consequence of the action that it takes with large businesses as a whole. With reference to HMRC’s performance across the board, additional yield is being achieved year after year, and this Government have provided resources to increase the yield on evasion and avoidance.”

He graciously admitted that HMRC can only pursue companies for tax that they actually owed under the law (as opposed to pursuing them for tax that they don't owe).

Who is responsible for passing the laws which HMRC and the companies they deal with have to follow?

That would be our elected representatives!


Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Homer Marriage Broker?

PAC, or rather a member of PAC, managed to get under Lin Homer's skin during yesterday's PAC meeting about tobacco smuggling.

Homer denied that Dave Hartnett's new firm (Deloitte) had played any significant role in major tax deals struck with private companies.

Margaret Hodge said there was a suggestion that Deloitte had been the "preferred facilitator" when deals were struck.

Homer (as per The Herald) said:

"Not to my knowledge and I don't see any evidence to suggest that they were playing either a preferred or significant role in our large disputes." 

The Conservative MP Richard Bacon tweaked Homer's nose by saying:

"What's really of interest is those occasions when you were buying advice from a firm such as Deloitte and the same firm was also selling its advice to a large taxpayer such as, to take one example, Vodafone.

If you were turning out to be the marriage broker who introduced the adviser to the company..."

To which Homer swiftly rebutted:

"That is an assertion that I do not accept, Mr Bacon."

A classic example of a problem arising from not just what is done, but what is seen/seems to be done (ie form over substance).

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Hodge's Tax Affairs To Be Investigated?

As per Guido Fawkes:

"Breaking: UKIP’s Godfrey Bloom calls on HMRC to investigate MP Margaret Hodge’s tax affairs."

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

How Are We Doing? - HMRC's Performance 2012/13

HMRC have published a self assessment of its performance against a range of compliance, operational and customer service measures for the financial year ending March 2013.

As per HMRC:

"For the year 2012-13 we achieved record revenues, brought PAYE up to date, and our customer service standards are at their highest levels since HMRC was formed in 2005, including telephone calls answered and our speed in answering post. And we have achieved this while continuing to deliver efficiency savings. These performance figures are provisional and will be confirmed in our annual report and accounts, which are published in June."

Amongst HMRC's boasts are that:

- 75.2% of call attempts were handled (achieving HMRC's undemanding target). Oddly though, there are no stats on call waiting times!
- 85% of post was cleared in 15 days (exceeding HMRC's 80% target)

Therefore everything is fine and dandy?

Not according to HMRC's political masters.

PAC have castigated HMRC over its failure to hit a target of reducing tax credit fraud and error, oddly enough this target isn't mentioned in the HMRC document referred to above.

In 2010 the government told HMRC to cut fraud and error by £8BN by 2015.

HMRC has now predicted that this would only be reduced by £3BN.

PAC are critical of the system which, in the committee's view, is difficult for claimants to understand and equally challenging for HMRC to administer.

The BBC quote a number of statistics:

• One in five awards featured an error or fraud which meant the claimants were overpaid
• A total of £1.7BN of these overpayments was written off because claimants were never likely to pay it back
• Some £2.3BN was lost to fraud and error in 2010-11, which was £850M more than HMRC expected
• A target to reduce the proportion of fraud in relation to the total amount of money spent on tax credits to 5% in 2010-11 was missed. It stood at 8.1%
• The 2015 target, set in the 2010 Spending Review, will now be missed by £5BN, according to HMRC estimates

The omnipresent Margaret Hodge said:

"HMRC's performance in cutting the level of fraud and error in the tax credits system has been hugely disappointing and extremely poor.

The department's failure to cut the fraud and error rate to 5% has cost the taxpayer dear. 

In these strained times, the government cannot afford these failures."

Ironically, having castigated HMRC, PAC then seem to take an intake of breath and admit that HMRC be given a "more realistic target" for reducing fraud and error.

Quite!

Targets are all very well and good, but if they are unachievable and unrealistic they are completely useless and indeed damaging to morale and performance.

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"

Stemcor

Tax does have to be taxing.

Professional Cover Against the Threat of Costly TAX and VAT Investigations

Insurance to protect you against the cost of enquiry or dispute with HMRC is available from several sources including Solar Tax Investigation Insurance.

Ken Frost has negotiated a 10% discount on any polices that may suit your needs.

However, neither Ken Frost nor HMRCISSHITE either endorses or recommends their services.

What is Solar Tax Investigation Insurance?

Solar Tax Investigation Insurance is a tax-fee protection service that will pay up to £75,000 towards your accountant's fees in the event of an HM Revenue & Customs full enquiry or dispute.

To find out more, please use this link Solar Tax Investigation Insurance



HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"