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...

Calling time on tax havens

Calling time on tax havens

Important article from Melanie Ward of Action Aid UK on the true, human cost of tax avoidance.  Surely this has to be one of the key battlegrounds for Election 2015.

Why May 8 is important

Today, the Queen goes to the House of Lords to read out 'her' government's agenda for the next session.  This is important in its way but not that important as it will largely consist of a list of sometime-never initiatives that will grab tomorrow's headlines but then sink quietly into the swamp of forlorn political hopes.

Far more importantly, today marks just two years to go until General Election day when the electorate can show what it thinks of five years of pointless austerity which has seen the rich get richer, the rich pay less and less tax (quite an achievement this, given that many government donors have never paid any), the food bank movement become one of few remaining growth endeavours, energy and water cartels cease to pay any attention whatsoever to so-called official watchdogs, and bankers become far and away the biggest recipients of state handouts.

I look forward to it.

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.

Are some fiddles more acceptable than others?

Congratulations to the BBC for their second in-depth investigation into benefit cheats in the space of a fortnight. When can we expect the same amount of impartial unbiased BBC scrutiny into the somewhat more costly scandal of corporate tax evasion? Would it be millions or trillions? Or are some fiddles more acceptable than others?