Posted: 13 February 2012
Issue: Vol 169, Issue 4341
Categories: Update, News, Admin, HMRC

Public accounts committee head describes 'gobsmackingly huge' figure

The chairperson of the House of Commons’ public accounts committee was ‘gobsmacked’ at the amount of tax that went uncollected during 2009/10.

Margaret Hodge MP described the figure as ‘ginormous’. Her remarks followed publication of HM Treasury’s first whole-of-government accounts, the purpose of which is to help ministers and policy-makers manage national debt.

The documents are intended to complement existing fiscal indicators such as the Office of Budget Responsibility’s annual evaluation of the UK’s long-term public fiscal outlook.

On examination of the accounts, Ms Hodge said, ‘The tax not collected… is a gobsmackingly huge, ginormous figure. I totted it up, with help, as being £105 billion’.

Committee member Nick Smith interjected with ‘Blimey!’, before the chair went on to claim the Treasury had written off £10.9 billion in 2009/10 – which the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Nicholas Macpherson, who was giving evidence before the committee, agreed was ‘a lot of money’.

The figure was, in fact, a provision made by the Treasury for irrecoverable debt, not tax written off.

Sir Nicholas said the taxman had ‘improved a bit on [the debt-recovery front] of late’ and urged ministers to ‘bear it in mind also that if a company goes bankrupt, obviously HMRC is the first creditor, but often you just don’t get the money back, so you’ll never get a zero score, but we need to work on it’.

To this remark, Ms Hodge responded, ‘That’s probably as good as we’ll get.’

ARTICLE UPDATED 14.2.12 via Tax Journal

 

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