HM Revenue & Customs performance in 2014–15

We recognise the achievement of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) in increasing the amount of tax collected while also reducing its running costs over the last 5 years. However, we are concerned that it has made little or no progress on a number of important issues that this Committee has raised before. Despite this Committee’s previous recommendations, HMRC still does not report on how much cash was received as a result of its compliance work or on the scale of aggressive tax avoidance which exploits loopholes in the law.

HMRC also continues to avoid publishing information on the scale and nature of tax reliefs that would assist Parliamentary oversight of this area of the tax system. The standard of customer service also remains unacceptable. We are particularly disappointed by HMRC’s failure in this area given that people are more likely to pay the right tax when they find HMRC easy to deal with. We also remain extremely concerned that HMRC’s work has led to too few prosecutions of individuals for tax evasion and that there is, therefore, no credible punishment to deter people from breaking the law in this manner.