HMRC Annual Report and Accounts 21-22
Closed
What the inquiry looked at
“Gareth Davies, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) of the National Audit Office, has ‘qualified’ his audit opinion on HMRC’s 2020-21 Annual Resource Accounts because of “material levels of error and fraud in the COVID-19 support schemes, Personal Tax Credits expenditure and Corporation Tax research and development reliefs” . The Committee will question Permanent Secretary Jim Harra and senior officials at HMRC on the issues identified by the NAO, as well as how HMRC is managing tax reliefs and revenue collection, especially after the UK’s tax debt levels doubled during the pandemic. If you have evidence on these issues please submit it here by Friday 7 October 2022.”
The committee's words, from the inquiry page on parliament.uk ↗.
What it found
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) published its 2021–22 Annual Report and Accounts ahead of the summer recess last July, an important milestone in returning to more timely reporting to Parliament. HMRC collected £731.1 billion in taxes and duties, the highest on record, reflecting the end of the acute phase of the pandemic and has made modest progress in restoring its performance to pre-pandemic levels. However, we do not consider that it has the resources required to provide the level of service its customers need, or to maximise the tax revenues it collects, at a time when the public finances are under huge strain. Improving customer service is set to become even more difficult as the current inflationary pressures squeeze taxpayer budgets and reduce HMRC’s own spending power.
In June 2022 £42 billion was owed to HMRC in tax debt, much more than before the pandemic. This debt is now set to fall more slowly than initially expected as taxpayers feel the effects of the cost-of-living crisis. In 2021–22 HMRC generated £30.8 billion from its compliance activities, though this also remains below pre-pandemic levels of performance. For every £1 that HMRC spends on compliance activities, it recovers £18 in additional tax revenue. The government is missing the opportunity to recover billions in lost revenue by not resourcing compliance.
HMRC will need to develop its ability to identify and support those taxpayers who are genuinely struggling while targeting its scarce resources to ensure that businesses and individuals who are able to meet their liabilities are paying their fair share. HMRC’s customer service performance has been declining for many years and is not acceptable to the taxpayers or agents it serves. We are unconvinced that HMRC’s plans to address this through moving more enquiries to digital channels will sustainably reduce demand or deal with the poor level of service quickly enough.
We are disappointed that HMRC only expects to recover around a quarter of the £4.5 billion it estimates was lost to fraud and error in the COVID-19 support schemes.
Fraud and error are also high for the Department’s costly research and development tax reliefs, which provide questionable benefit to the UK economy. While recognising the challenges involved, we believe that there is a moral duty to pursue fraud to ensure fairness and maintain a level playing field for individuals and businesses that did not abuse the schemes, rather than HMRC being seen to reward those that were dishonest.
HMRC should be much more ambitious with its plans to tackle fraud and error and recover losses. It needs to rethink its approach so that it can bring in more money with its limited resources, ensuring honest claimants are not left at a relative disadvantage simply because they are more compliant.
What the government said
The government responded on 12 April 2023. The deadline was 11 March 2023.
Read the government's response ↗ Read the report ↗ Report an error
How the inquiry ran
Each dot is a dated item listed on this page, from the inquiry's opening on 26 July 2022 to its close on 13 April 2023. The dashed mark is the deadline Parliament records for the government's response.
- Oral evidence 20 Oct 2022
- Report 11 Jan 2023
- Government response 12 Apr 2023
- Correspondence 3 letters
What it recommended 10 recommendations · 13 conclusions
2Resourcing HMRC’s compliance work to maintain rather than reduce the tax gap means the government...
3HMRC’s plan to only recover a quarter of losses due to fraud and error on...
4We are concerned that HMRC may be lagging behind other established tax authorities in preventing...
5Taxpayers and their agents are still not receiving an acceptable level of customer service.
6HMRC has further to go until it can differentiate between taxpayers who are genuinely struggling,...
7Research and development tax reliefs are costly, prone to abuse and provide questionable benefit to...
1On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence...
8HMRC’s 2020–21 estimates of the tax gap are more uncertain than usual due to the...
9With the resources it was given in the 2021 Spending Review, HMRC’s aim is to...
10HMRC estimates that total fraud and error across the lifetime of the COVID-support schemes was...
11HMRC has been given £100 million to fund a temporary taskforce to investigate fraud and...
12We raised the point that there was a moral duty and fairness issue to pursue...
13We asked HMRC about a case where a criminal used a legitimate company’s details, apparently...
14HMRC told us that VAT is a particular target for organised crime as it can...
15HMRC’s post and call handling performance fell significantly during the pandemic.
16HMRC said that it limits the number of callers that can join the call queue,...
17HMRC’s expects to improve customer service by continuing digitalise the tax system, for instance by...
18The total tax debt owed to HMRC in August 2022 was £46 billion.
19HMRC said it is dealing with a larger number of smaller debts than it is...
20HMRC said it is trying to improve the data it uses to understand the behaviour...
21The government has a target of 2.4% of GDP to be spent on research and...
22In 2021–22, HMRC granted research and development tax reliefs worth £9.5 billion.34 HMRC said the...
23Fraud and error is particularly high on the scheme for small and medium-sized enterprises, estimated...
Evidence
Oral evidence sessions 1
- 20 Oct 2022HMRC Annual Report & Accounts 21-224 witnesses, listed belowparliament.uk ↗
Who gave evidence 4 witnesses
- Angela MacDonaldDeputy Chief Executive and Second Permanent Secretary, HMRC
- Jane WhittakerDirector for Knowledge, Analysis and Intelligence, HM Revenue and Customs
- Jim HarraPermanent Secretary and Chief Executive, HMRC
- Justin HollidayChief Finance Officer, HMRC
Correspondence 3 letters
- 6 Dec 2022Correspondence from Jim Harra, Chief Executive and First Permanent Secretary, re Thirty-Seventh Report of Session 2021-22: HMRC Performance in 2020–21, dated 30 November 2022
- 15 Nov 2022Correspondence from Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, HM Treasury, re following the Public Accounts Committee session on Thursday 20 October 2022, dated 4 November 2022
- 8 Sep 2022Correspondence from Jim Harra, Chief Executive and First Permanent Secretary, re Public Accounts Committee: Thirty Seventh report of Session 2021-22 Recommendation 8, dated 29 July 2022