Archive for the ‘Consultation’ Category

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Open tax consultations

May 29, 2013

Here are the four from HMRC:

Title Link Date of closure
Changes to VAT zero-rating of exports from the UK Link here 5 July 2013
National insurance and self-employed entertainers Link here 6 August 2013
A review of two aspects of the tax rules on Partnerships Link here 9 August 2013
Office of Tax Simplification: review of unapproved share schemes Link here 16 August 2013

(One day I’ll work out how to do pretty tables in WordPress, sorry!)

There are a couple of interesting things about this list, over and above my general gripes about the problems of finding them in the first place.

Note the closing dates?  The earliest one is 37 days away, and the others are 69, 72 and 79 days respectively.  The days of a three month (90 day) consultation are over, and the concern about consultations over holiday periods haven’t quite sunk in  yet.

Also… where are the rest?  Look at table 2.1 (starting on page 64 here) of Budget Policy Decisions.  Ignore the measures already announced and skip down to the heading “Growth and enterprise” and look from there to the end of the table.  I make it 29 measures from there on down which are categorised as “tax” (as opposed to spending) changes.  Then look at OOTLAR (Overview of Tax Legislation and Rates) published at the same time and go to chapter two, Future Tax Changes (start on page 18) where you will find 47 announcements, some of which will and some of which won’t lead to consultations.

Oh, and look at this, published in the same chapter, back in March:

2.1 This chapter summarises new tax changes announced in Budget 2013, where the change is to be made in Finance Bill 2014, other future finance bills, programme bills or secondary legislation. In line with the Government’s new approach to tax policy making, the vast majority of these measures will be subject to consultation. To assist those who wish to take part in tax consultations, a “tracker” will be published on the HM Treasury and HMRC websites setting out the planned dates of future consultations.

Well where’s my bloody tracker then????

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Gov.uk

May 28, 2013

What do we think about the new! improved! all-singing, all-dancing! government website, gov.uk?

I only ask because, of course, all the government’s tax consultations have been moved onto the new site, and because of the suggestion – which also became a recommendation by the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee – that there should be a single government website listing ALL consultations in the order of the date of closure.

Because – as I have previously mentioned – if you go here, to the consultation page, you have to filter first to get “consultations” from the welter of other “publications”, and then you have to filter again by department (not subject) to get HMRC and HMT consultations, and even then there’s no way of filtering out tax consultations from other Treasury consultations.

However this gives you a list of (today, at least) 19 HMRC consultations and 89 HMT consultations – but of the HMRC 19 there are only four open consultations, as against 10 “closed consultations” and four “consultation outcomes”, and HMT has 5 open consultations, 45 “consultation outcomes” and 39 “closed consultations”.  Wouldn’t it be great if you could just filter by “open consultations” and THEN by Department and get to the nine you were actually interested in?

I had assumed the functionality wasn’t there on the website and that, in response to the House of Lords Committee’s recommendations, they’d be working on it when and if resources allowed.

And then I came across this page, on Getting Involved, where there is a running tally of open consultations telling me there are, currently, 55 open consultations across the government, or at least across government departments and agencies that have moved their web presence over to the Gov.uk site.

So the functionality to identify open consultations IS there somewhere, but isn’t being used in a way that would actually be useful to the users of the site?  You’d almost think it was deliberate…

Posted in Consultation | Tagged , , | 9 Comments »

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Closing the enquiry centres: the final response

May 24, 2013

Don’t forget that today is the last day to make your feelings known about the proposal to close HMRC’s face to face enquiry centres.  Here’s what I sent:

This is an individual response and is also published online, with commentary, on my blog http://tiintax.com.  There were four earlier blog posts on this issue which you might also find interesting to read.

1.  You have not included the question of *whether* contact centres should be closed within the scope of your consultation, presumably because the decision has already been taken.  However you say you will evaluate the “pilot” closure before proceeding further.  Given that the research on which your decision is based is only into the “always needs help” population (and does not include those of us who are “willing but need help” occasionally) I strongly suggest you include some customers in the group evaluating the pilot closure.  In particular, you ought to assess the impact on customers in your “willing and able” and “willing but needs help” categories as well as on the “always needs help” group.  You should do this by appointing an external scrutiny panel to work with you on the evaluation.  This should include trades union representatives and civil society groups from the affected area.
2. Here are the answers to your specific questions.  However you should note that your consultation document has some accessibility issues, for instance the inability to convert it to another format (e.g. at the simplest level, to copy and paste from it into an email) and is not in accordance with best practice.
Q1 Have we missed any particular groups in our definition of customers who need extra help?
This is a fundamentally misconceived question.  The enquiry centres support ALL of HMRC’s customers, not only those who need “extra” help.  Your proposals do not seem to allow for any service offering other than telephone and the web for anyone except “customers who need extra help” and so I suppose my answer is that the group you have missed is, everyone else!
Q2.  What do you think are the main benefits and disadvantages of the proposed new approach?
Clearly the main advantage is that you will “save” some £60 million a year in operating costs by closing the enquiry centres.  The main disadvantage is that you are diverting some £60 million a year away from customer service without any clear advantage in return.  The ordinary citizen has, surely, a right to a service from HMRC that enables them to pay their taxes efficiently.  Unless you can radically improve your basic service level offering over the phone and on the net, you are effectively taking £60m “savings” by putting the costs onto service users and civil society organisations.
The consultation also suggests to me that “ordinary” taxpayers are being offered a “take it or leave it” service and that the decision whether a person requires “extra” help will rest with HMRC rather than the service user.  This is deeply offensive – for example, I have a mild hearing impairment.  At present I can decide for myself whether I am able to transact with you over the phone or require further assistance either in person or otherwise.  Under your proposals it seems I will have to explain my impairment to a call centre operative and let THEM decide whether I’m disabled ENOUGH to be offered assistance.  I consider this is not only a “disadvantage” of your proposals but is likely to be in breach of your  statutory obligation to provide reasonable adjustment to citizens with disabilities.
Q3  Could any particular groups of customers find it difficult to contact HMRC using the new service?
Um… all of them?
Q4.  How do you suggest we can overcome any difficulties?
By treating taxpayers and service users as citizens with rights, rather than customers.
Q5  How else could we improve the proposed new service?
Ask the people affected at regular intervals.  Use citizen juries to check your conclusions.  Establish an oversight committee with representatives from civil society groups, trades unions and other affected parties to report back on progress.
Q6  What else could we do to improve:
(a) our new extra support telephone adviser service
(b) direction of certain customers to the voluntary sector and vice versa
(c ) the flexibility of our approach to providing support for those customers who need it?
A – see A5, above
B and C – these seem to me to be fundamentally misconceived questions.  HMRC should not be abandoning customers by telling them to eff off and talk to a charity – you have a duty of care towards all the citizens who transact with you, and “flexibility” is not, in and of itself, a positive to which you should aspire.  What you should be aspiring to is a satisfactory service (or, preferably, a better than satisfactory, i.e. a GOOD service) to ALL citizens of the uk.
Q7  Are there any other factors we need to take into account when trying to identify people who need extra help?
It is not your place to “identify” people who need extra help: people should be able to access help according to their own assessment of their needs, and you should be meeting those needs in accordance with the concept of all citizens having equal rights.
Q8.  Is there anything more we need to do to make sure that customers who currently use our Enquiry Centres, but don’t need extra help to resolve their query, can access our services?
You need to make substantial improvements to both your web and telephone offerings.  You might try a number of approaches, including but not limited to:
  • using citizen juries and other feedback mechanisms to improve your web presence
  • using basic feedback forms to capture feedback from users of the website in order to improve it
  • responding to enquiries submitted via email, twitter and other social media platforms and aggregating any frequently asked questions to create a dynamic feedback loop to improve your website
  • experiment with actually answering your phones (rather than filtering calls via recorded message trees)
  • take note of the research with clearly indicates that people dislike multilayered menus and voice recognition systems and increase the number of actual human beings responding to calls
Q9.  Are there any impacts on particular groups of customers that we have not identified and that need to be addressed?
Yes: people who need one-off help do not appear to be well served by the suggested new service.
Q10 How do you suggest we can overcome these?
See 8, above.
Q11.  Are there any other groups of customers that we have not included in our considerations.  If so, please specify who they are and let us know what we need to take into account in respect of these groups.
See 9 above.
Q12.  What other methods of communicating the consultation response should we be considering?
Seriously?  You’re going to close down the face to face service and you’re asking us how we prefer you to tell us?  How about “in a hundred years time”?

Posted in Consultation, HMRC | Leave a Comment »

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Um… hello?

May 10, 2013

efficient secondary legislation and engagement with the public through the medium of consultation is, in my view, the very bedrock of an effective and inclusive parliamentary democracy.  (The Earl of Lytton, Hansard  11 March 2013 Column GC34)

 

Maybe I’ve just lost my google-fu, my ability to find stuff on the internet? I don’t know.  I’ve been busy with the day job (I’m a PhD student by day and a writer of science fiction and fantasy by night) so maybe I’ve taken my eye off the ball.  But it occurred to me lately that, as well as finishing off my responses to the consultation on closure of the HMRC enquiry centres (the consultation closes on 24th May and I’ve already blogged about it here, here and here.  Oh, and here.  Not to mention here.) I should also check out what other tax consultations are around and plan what work I’m going to do on this blog over the next few weeks and months.

Um… hello?

So there doesn’t seem to be a tax tracker on the HMT pages any more.  The Treasury has moved all its consultations over to the new GOV.UK website, and the links on the Treasury site now take you to the consultations search page on GOV.UK, here.

Which might be helpful, except that, at the time of writing, there are 991 documents under the “consultations” heading on that page, they include open consultations, closed consultations, and consultation responses (and there’s no way to filter by “open consultations”).  Oh, and they’re in date order – of the date they were published and not by the date which would actually be useful, ie the date that the consultation closes.  (Has anyone told the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee? (see para 54 here))

Filtering this with “tax and revenue” as the topic brings up five documents, the enquiry centre closure consultation and four closed consultations.

Well OK then.  Filtering it again by department, brings up 87 documents under HMT, only three of which are open consultations. (Two on finance industry topics, the “special administration regime for payment and settlement systems”, and one on “opening up UK payments” which I may go back to, because from a cursory glance it looks to be about abolishing cheques) and – finally – a relevant one, yet another tweak to the REITs regime, the rules on Real Estate Investment Trusts.

Filtering it by department again but this time scrolling down to find HMRC brings up fifteen results.  Only one of those is an open consultation, and it’s our old friend “Supporting Customers Who Need Extra Help: A New Approach”, which is newspeak for “Closing the Enquiry Centres”

But look back at this time last year.  In April and May 2012 I was responding to a dozen open consultations resulting from Budget announcements and pointing out that there were no fewer than 21 formal consultations which were listed on the tracker as being due to open in May.

So where are the 2013 consultations?  Were there no tax changes announced in the 2013 Budget?  (They weren’t all consulted on in a fortnight via twitter while I wasn’t looking, were they???)

The HMRC Budget 2013 page says all consultations will be on the GOV.UK site.

So, um… hello?  Where are they?

 

Posted in Consultation, HMRC, HMT | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

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Closing the enquiry centres: part four

April 16, 2013

There’s a nice flowchart in chapter 5 (on page 10) of the consultation into what will replace the closed enquiry centres.  There are different coloured pathways, each ending in a smiley face and a comment like “resolved online”  or “resolved by HMRC contact centre”

My google-fu isn’t sufficient to reproduce it here but, please, go to the consultation and have a look at it.  See that big box in the middle, the one that nearly all the pathways lead through?  The one that says:

HMRC Contact Centre

Straightforward queries are solved on the spot by expert advisers in HMRC’s contact centres

Customers needing extra support are referred to the new HMRC specialist support team

Where does that leave the rest of us?  You know, those of us who ring the contact centre with queries that aren’t “straightforward”, but we aren’t deemed “needy” enough to qualify for the “extra support” of the new HMRC specialist support team?

The flow chart is silent.  There’s no arrow leading us out of this binary box.  Either our queries need to be “straightforward” enough that the contact centre can answer them, or we need to be “needy” enough to qualify for “extra” support.  There’s no third way, no provision for an ordinary taxpayer with an out of the ordinary problem.  We can bounce around inside the big box and never reach a smiley face at the end of the pathway.

>:-(

Posted in Consultation, Equality, HMRC | 4 Comments »

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Closing the enquiry centres: part three

April 12, 2013

Let’s delve a little further into the weasel words of the consultation into closing HMRC’s enquiry centres – or, rather, the consultation into what will be left when the enquiry centres close.

3.16 When an adviser decides that the customer’s query is best dealt with by a voluntary and community sector organisation, they will provide information to the customer to help them choose the organisation most suited to their needs

So… at the moment I could wander down to my local enquiry office and ask someone a question.  Most of the time I would be pointed to a phone hanging on the wall and told to phone the helpline, but at least if I found the helpline didn’t know the answer, or I couldn’t understand what they meant, then I could make an appointment to speak to someone about it, probably with a few days wait time.  Under the new proposals I wouldn’t have that facility at all.  The choice of a face to face meeting is taken from the taxpayer and given to the Department.  Am I “needy” enough?  Would I be identified by an HMRC advisor as having sufficient “need” to warrant being given anything but the same answer over and over?

All of us who have tried to find something out on a website and got “stuck” will know how frustrating it is to be directed back to the same site, the same words.  When you don’t understand the words, or they don’t quite answer your question or fit your circumstances, and all you want is the reassurance of talking to a human being (“So if I put just ignore the pennies and put the pounds in the box that’s all right, is it?  Or do I have to round it to the nearest pound?”) well, tough.

Am I exaggerating?

And what about the idea that HMRC will simply tell some people to bog off and talk to someone else?  Or, to put it another way, “3.16 When an adviser decides that the customer’s query is best dealt with by a voluntary and community sector organisation, they will provide information to the customer to help them choose the organisation most suited to their needs”

Does this not mean, then, that some cases HMRC will decide the customer is too “needy’ or difficult, or their affairs are too complicated, or it’s simply not “cost effective” to help them, and will instead shuffle them off to a “voluntary and community sector organisation”.

Where are these organisations to come from?  Where are their volunteers, their funding, their training and experience, to take on the work that a government department has decided it hasn’t got the funds to provide for its citizens?

Am I the only person appalled by this?

For shame, HMRC.  We are citizens, not customers; we have rights and responsibilities.  And a government department doesn’t get to decide whether we’re “needy”.  And it definitely doesn’t get to decide whether we’re needy enough.

Posted in Consultation, Equality, HMRC | 3 Comments »

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Closing the enquiry centres: part two

March 28, 2013

In today’s weasel hunt, let’s move on to the detail of the proposed replacement for HMRC’s Enquiry Centres.

Section 2 of the document is all about defining our terms – looking at who these people are who need the “extra” help that will replace the Enquiry Centres.  There are six categories of “need” identified, one of which is people needing help because of HMRC “complexity and errors”.  The others are:

  • difficulty of accessing current services
  • personal confidence
  • mental or emotional state
  • lack of ability
  • complexity of the enquiry

and there are further examples and descriptions of what might put a person into one of these “needy” categories such as hearing or eyesight issues.

Now this bothers me.  I reject the initial premise that help should only be provided for those with “extra” needs rather than to all citizens, but even if you accept that premise and take it on its own terms, look at the contrast between this and the current enquiry centre offering, where it is explicit that “most” enquiry centres “can” offer

  • Induction Loops.
  • Lighted Magnifiers – to help you read our forms.
  • Crystal Listening Devices – to help you if you are hard of hearing.
  • Sign Language Interpreters – we can arrange a British Sign Language Interpreter for you if you let us know in advance.
  • Written material in Braille, audio and large print.
  • Help for people for whom English is not their first language – we can arrange interpretation for you. Please ask at your nearest Enquiry Centre.
  • Help for people who need assistance in completing forms or returns – We can help you. Please ask at your nearest Enquiry Centre.
  • Home Visits – if you have limited mobility or have caring responsibilities we may be able to offer you a home visit. Please ring the helpline.

I’m not sure how much I believe this – there’s a big difference between something you “can” offer and something you actually DO offer – but look at the proposed new “improved” offer:

3.6 The adviser will identify customers who might need extra help, based on a number of factors identified by our research. They include customers mentioning their disabilities, being particularly anxious and/or distressed, failing to understand the guidance being given or follow the conversation, repeating questions, inability to express themselves…

So let’s take the example of a person who is elderly and hearing impaired.  At the moment, she can go to an enquiry centre and ask to use the induction loop so she can hear the adviser via her hearing aid, checking for accuracy via lip reading and facial expression, and be treated in the same way as any other customer except for the organisation making the reasonable adaptation necessary to comply with the Equality Act in its dealings with her.

In future?  She’ll have to ring up and rely on an adviser identifying her as needing extra help – is she deaf enough?  old enough?  to be “deserving” of the “extra” help that the Department might “offer“?

Is it just me, or is this so offensive it makes your head want to explode?

 

 

 

 

 

 

(edited 28/3/13 to replace “DDA” with “Equality Act” – the requirement to make reasonable adjustments is now in section 20 of the Equality Act 2010)

Posted in Consultation, DDA, HMRC | 2 Comments »

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Closing the enquiry centres part one

March 20, 2013

All right then, let’s have a look at the consultation on HMRC’s closure of its enquiry centres.  It’s here, on the GOV.UK website and please note it closes on 24 May.

But don’t rush – the decision to close the enquiry centres has already been taken.  The consultation isn’t about whether to close the enquiry centres but about what kind of “service” will replace them.  You think I’m exaggerating? Because the introduction says:

No final decision will be made until we have consulted on and piloted the new service, and fully assessed the findings of the consultation and the pilot.

But look at the summary of consultation questions, on page 16 – there isn’t one question where respondents are asked whether closing the enquiry centres is a reasonable idea unless you think you can sneak it into question 2:

What do you think are the main benefits and disadvantages of the proposed new approach?

So let’s start.

Why we are changing

1.1 Some HMRC customers need extra help to get their taxes and entitlements right. We want to provide this extra help in a way that suits them.

All right.  Look at the weasel word “extra”.  SOME customers need EXTRA help.  What about the rest of us, who just need, you know, help?  Not “extra” help, over and above: just “some” help?

Now, I know my way around a tax return.  But just about every year that I’ve had to complete a tax return I’ve hit some kind of snag, somewhere that I’ve wondered which box does this go into, does that mean the net or gross figure…   Do I need “extra” help, or just “help”?

People have been complaining for years about being called “customers” instead of “taxpayers” and this consultation makes it clear to me why.  Because taxpayers are citizens and citizens have rights; customers are sources of revenue who have customer service, tailored to their value to the organisation.  And a low paying customer like you or me will get a lesser service than a high value customer like a multinational.  We don’t get a customer relationship manager or a customer coordinator: we get the “pay up and piss off” service.

Moving on.

1.2 Most customers with simple queries choose to visit our website for help…

Do they?  Do they really?  The weasel word this time is “choose”.  Do they make a “choice” to visit the HMRC website, or are they driven to it because the enquiry centre is only open between 9.30 and 1.30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and there’s nowhere to phone up and check that out before you actually get there, and it takes five minutes to answer the phone and that’s after you’ve navigated through two minutes of recorded messages and telephone trees…

Again, let’s move on to 1.3

For many people, visiting an Enquiry Centre is not, and has never been, a convenient option. Because of this, some customers have struggled to get the support they need from us.

Let’s play “spot the weasel”, shall we?  Anyone?

Yes, that’s right, it’s “and has never been”.  Because at least in direct taxes, in the days of the old Inland Revenue, we used to have a network of tax offices in the communities in which they served, with an enquiry counter where people could come in and drop off their tax returns and ask their questions.  And, because of the structure of the organisation, there were other people in the building with specialist expertise who could answer trickier questions and access specialist advice.  The reason enquiry centres aren’t a convenient option now is purely down to the actions of the organisation since the merger.  So it may be true, but it isn’t a law of nature – it’s a political decision.

Moving on…

1.4 Even for customers living close-by, the use of Enquiry Centres has fallen sharply in recent years…

In our Hexham office, which received just 601 visits last year, the average cost of an appointment is £185.

I had to google Hexham (it’s in Northumberland – looks a really nice place for a visit actually) but it didn’t take me long to work out why they only had 601 visits last year: if you look at the helpfully inaccessible spreadsheet here you’ll see that the Hexham enquiry office is open for exactly four hours a week, between 9.30 and 1.30 on Friday mornings.

And there I’m going to stop for today and try to calm down a bit.  Although the Budget’s starting in a few minutes, so maybe it’s time to break out the emergency bottle of Talisker…

Posted in Consultation, HMRC | 2 Comments »

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Language, Timothy!

March 4, 2013

Back to the Mail Online again today for the story about the top dozen UK companies that pay no tax.  Serendipitously, there’s some thoughtful material on the same subject from Robert Maas in the last issue of Taxation (behind a paywall, sorry) where he asks “Are organisations really dodging tax, or are they just following the rules?”

This brings me back to the language of tax; Maas makes some reasonable points

  • Amazon makes its UK sales through a Luxembourg subsidiary.  It has warehousing in the UK, but under the 1968 Double Taxation agreement with Luxembourg a warehouse doesn’t constitute a “permanent establishment” that would make the sales from that warehouse taxable in the UK.
  • Starbucks has its intellectual property in a Netherlands company (in other words the know-how of how to run a branch of Starbucks) and it franchises UK shops.  So the profits made by an individual franchise would be payable by the franchisee in the UK, but would be decreased by the amount it pays to Holland for the know-how.

but his conclusion – “Most of the so-called avoidance schemes that are being publicly criticised are not avoidance at all” is a bit more difficult if you’re not a tax expert.

The fact is that the person on the Clapham omnibus – the tax muggle, if you will – doesn’t care about the complexity of tax legislation but applies the “it’s not fair” test.  It doesn’t feel fair that I have spent £100 on books without leaving my chair and that a British postman has brought them right to my door, but because I bought them from Amazon instead of [insert name of non-Amazon book seller here.  There must still be one somewhere, right?] then the profits the seller made aren’t taxed here but in Luxembourg.

Similarly it feels wrong if I’m sitting in Sheffield drinking a caramel macchiatto and eating my red velvet cake but somehow the profits from selling them to me get taxed in Holland.

But if we talk about tax avoidance in these terms it seems to me we’re generating heat without light.  “It’s not the firms, it’s the system” yes, maybe – but where does that get us?  The interesting thing to me is the government’s ambition to make the UK a “competitive” tax system, to show that it’s “open for business”.  That’s where I can shrug and agree with Maas that it’s not necessarily a “fault” for a company to arrange its trade in a way that takes advantage of the “competitiveness” of the different tax regimes in different countries: the issue isn’t with the actions of the company but with the people who designed the system in which they operate.

Perhaps, though, the issue takes us back to the one which didn’t really get bottomed out in the PAC hearings – if the fault is in the way the government makes its tax legislation, then the whiff of something smelly comes from the involvement of the same big businesses that profit from “tax competitiveness” in designing the competing systems.  That’s why we shouldn’t have a revolving door between industry and civil service, and why we should have records of meetings between Ministers and civil servants and industry representatives.

And, while we’re at it, why we ought to have the Small Firms Impact Test back in the list of things that must be included in the work of policy development, rather than archived at the back of the bus and replaced by some meaningless warm words.

Posted in Bit of politics, Consultation, SFIT | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

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Moving on

February 21, 2013

Seventy days and counting since the Treasury updated the tax consultations page, but the HMRC consultations page has had a couple of new ones added – look down at the bottom of the page – with extremely short deadlines.

So if you’re interested in the taxation of non-doms you need to check out the third iteration of consultation on legislating the extra statutory concession 1/09, a consultation on some revised legislation that was issued on 11 February where the consultation closes on February 25th.  I don’t intend to respond, as it’s a small and very techy change to do with non-domiciled people employed in work that takes place both inside and outside the UK and what to do about bank accounts where employment earnings from both UK and non-UK work is received.  Frankly, I don’t care: but I DO care that it’s stupidly complex legislation that would have been better tackled by a proper review of (and, preferably, abolition of) the entire concept of non-doms.  But there you are.  A two week consultation.  How’s that working out for you?

The second one is the procurement guidance: the much vaunted plan to prevent tax avoiders from benefiting from government contracts.  Given that this was announced in September it’s hard to see why it needs to be open for public consultation for a mere fourteen days (it was issued on 14th February and closes on 28th) but I rather suspect the answer is that there’s not going to be any alterations to it, whatever the feedback.  The government seems to have found a reasonably workable plan to use relatively objective criteria to decide what sort of avoidance is objectionable enough to allow them to disbar a firm from government contracts without falling foul of EU procurement rules.  So if a firm has used a DOTAS scheme that doesn’t work, or if it uses a scheme that falls foul of the GAAR or a TAAR, or it has a civil or criminal penalty, well, it won’t get a government contract.

Here’s the real test.  Would it have stopped the Mapeley contract, where the old Inland Revenue accidentally sold its property portfolio to a firm based in a tax haven?

No.

In which case, frankly, who cares?

Posted in Bit of politics, Consultation, HMRC | Leave a Comment »

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