“These figures show the tax gap is continuing to fall. The vast majority of businesses and individuals pay the taxes they owe. But where they don’t it is for HMRC to challenge non- compliance fiercely, protecting money that would otherwise be lost. Since 2010, the Government has invested nearly £1 billion in additional compliance initiatives over the Spending Review period. HMRC is on track to secure a further £44 billion in tax revenues over the next two years.”
Edward Troup, HMRC’s Tax Assurance Commissioner and Second Permanent Secretary, said:
“The range of non-compliance behaviours revealed by these tax gap figures underline why it is so important for HMRC to step up our wide-ranging activities against the minority who aren’t paying what’s due, whether they are SMEs, individuals, big business or organised criminals. This isn’t just critical for the nation’s finances: it’s also important to protect the vast majority of honest businesses and individuals from being cheated by the unscrupulous few.”
An opportunity for you to help HMRC shape the design of a new online service for small and medium businesses
17 October 2013
HMRC is developing a new online service for small and medium businesses. The new service will bring together in one place everything businesses need to manage their tax affairs. From a personalised homepage they will be able to view key information and access online services to manage their business tax affairs, for example: file tax returns, check and make payments, view important dates for future action. HMRC is looking for volunteers to take part in a live trial of an early version of this new online service. Volunteers will be able to access the service from any internet-enabled PC they are currently using and no special equipment or expert IT knowledge will be needed, just basic internet skills. Volunteers will be asked to provide some feedback on their experience of using the new service. This is likely to be done using short, occasional online surveys during the trial and, possibly, a slightly longer survey at the end of the trial. None of the surveys is expected to take more than 5 minutes to complete (unless you want to provide a lot of narrative comment). If you’re a frequent user of the new service then you will not be asked to complete a survey every time you log in, and you will always have the option not to complete a survey. Your feedback will be used to help shape the development and design of the service before it is made available to all small and medium businesses in 2014. Depending on the progress and outcome of the trial, HMRC may want to collect more detailed feedback, for example through telephone interviews and interest groups, and as a volunteer you will be offered an opportunity to participate – but this is not compulsory and it is not a condition of taking part in the trial. If you are interested in taking part in this trial, please register your interest with HMRC by 16 November 2013 using the link below. This will take you to an online form where you will be asked to provide some basic information about your business, such as the nature of your business and your business postcode. HMRC will use this information to ensure that a diverse range of small and medium businesses are selected to participate in the trial. Please note: by registering your interest to take part in the trial you will be giving HMRC permission to contact you. This will only be to confirm whether or not you have been selected to take part in the trial and, if you have, to obtain feedback about the new service.
CIPP Policy News Journal
16/04/2014, Page 168 of 519
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