Dismal failure of Customs and Revenue

I found an interesting snippet in the report of Margaret Hodge's Public Accounts Committee for September 10 2014.

I'm sure we've all heard reports that HMRC is doing much better at making the tax-dodgers cough up.  Well, not quite,

It turns out they made a trivial error of a mere £1.9 billion when setting the baseline against which their performance could be judged.  Thus in 2012, 2013 and right up until this summer, they were boasting they had exceeded their targets by miles when in fact they only just about scraped past the line.  As a result George Osborne and the Treasury team have repeatedly misled parliament.  Usually, I'd relish the chance to berate George for telling whoppers, but in this instance he was lied to first.  And if you can't trust HMRC to do a simple adding up exercise...

One law for the corporate...

Further to Peter's post about tax evasion, the Commons Public Accounts Committee yesterday published its damning report on the sweetheart deals done between HM Revenue & Customs and hugely profitable international corporations, specifically Goldman Sachs and Vodaphone. Looks like up to £25bn in tax is cheerfully being waived by no more than four unaccountable commissioners.

The full report is here. A summary, including withering criticism from committee chair Margaret Hodge (left), is here.