Partner Article

Tax debate shifts from avoidance to evasion

With the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development now working on plans to tackle international tax avoidance by multi-national corporations, and summer rapidly turning to autumn in the UK, we expect to see a change in emphasis in the Great Tax Debate as parliament reconvenes.

For the last couple of years, the main topic of tax debate has been tax avoidance. HMRC’s figures suggest this causes a loss of around £5bn per annum to the Exchequer, around 0.8% of total tax collected.

By contrast, taken together, the hidden economy (£5bn) and outright tax evasion (£4bn) are costing the UK Exchequer almost twice as much as avoidance – namely £9bn per year.

We can expect to hear more about this over the coming months.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by George Bull .