Sometimes it seems that clamping down on tax avoidance is the gift that keeps on giving – because no one really knows the scale of the problem, politicians can be very optimistic about the amount of extra revenue that can be generated. Danny Alexander claimed at this year’s Liberal Democrat conference that a clamp down would provide as much as an extra £10bn a year for the Exchequer by 2015. This is more than rhetoric; the government has been spending some of this additional money already. The commitments in the Autumn Statement to fund policies like the extension of free school meals and the freeze in fuel duty are balanced out by increased tax revenues from reducing avoidance. If those revenues can’t be found, then the government will have to borrow more, raise taxes or make spending cuts elsewhere.
Today’s Public Accounts Committee report puts the Treasury’s claims on reducing avoidance in perspective. The committee concludes that HMRC “massively over-estimated” how much unpaid tax it would collect from UK holders of Swiss bank accounts. HMRC has only managed to collect £440m so far against an estimate of £3.12bn given in the 2012 Autumn Statement. In the light of these criticisms, it seems sensible to take a step back and interrogate HMRC’s figures.
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