This week's opinion

Much of the reaction to the latest Public Accounts Committee report on HMRC’s performance highlights the admission that HMRC does not include time spent listening to automated messages when measuring the average length of calls it receives. That speaks for itself and I need say nothing more.

What caught my attention however was this statement given in evidence by HMRC: ‘We are seeing in the economy a movement away from employment towards small businesses so the underlying pressure is people moving out of an area of taxation that is highly compliant into an area that is highly non-compliant. That is a key challenge for us.’

In a technical sense this is right. Most people on PAYE do not have compliance obligations and therefore are unlikely to become non-compliant. But does it point to a worrying mindset – that HMRC believes self-employed people are not to...