Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 8
9th Report - Large business tax compliance
Published 10 Jul 2026
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Large business tax compliance All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
Given the high return on investment HMRC gets from its compliance work with large businesses, we asked it why it did not spend more on the large business directorate. HMRC told us that it was recruiting 5,500 full- time equivalent compliance staff across the organisation, but that these staff would mostly focus on small business compliance as this is where the majority of the tax gap lies.12 HMRC wrote to us after the evidence session and explained that the large business directorate plans to recruit 50 compliance officers from HMRC’s Civil Compliance Foundation Learning programme, and following an external recruitment campaign in Autumn 2025, is on track to recruit 48 new, external tax specialists.13
From: Public Accounts Committee, 9th Report - Large business tax compliance (HC 86), 10 July 2026
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 1 October 2026 (deadline 10 September 2026).