Scottish taxpayer address records remains biggest risk to HMRC 29 November 2016
Maintaining accurate address records of the 2.6 million Scottish taxpayers remains the biggest risk facing HMRC in ensuring that Scottish income tax is assessed and collected properly, according to a report by the NAO.
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, said:
“HMRC has made good progress in assuring itself of the accuracy of the Scottish taxpayer population, but could do more with its own data to improve the accuracy of income tax receipt estimates. People are at risk of paying the incorrect amount of tax if they do not provide HMRC with accurate address data, and HMRC do not know whether its interventions to raise awareness of this, has been successful.”
HM Revenue & Customs continues to administer and collect Scottish income tax as part of the UK tax system. The Scottish Government pays the administration costs incurred by HMRC. In 2016-17 these were £6.3 million.
The report by the NAO states that for the 2016-17 tax year, the Scottish Parliament decided to effectively match the income tax rates in Scotland to those in the rest of the UK. HMRC estimates it will collect £4.6 billion attributable to the Scottish rate of income tax for 2016-17. The actual amount collected will not be known until July 2018. While the estimate is fairly stated, it would benefit from the greater use of taxpayer data from its own systems. The actual amount of Scottish income tax collected in 2016-17 will not affect the Scottish Government’s budget. But from 2020-21 the Scottish Government’s budget will be adjusted to reflect the actual tax receipts collected from Scottish taxpayers from 2017-18. In 2017-18, income tax rules in Scotland differ from the rest of the UK for the first time. Scottish taxpayers pay the higher rate of tax (40%) when they earn £43,000 – as opposed to £45,000 in the rest of the UK. HMRC estimate that 386,000 Scottish taxpayers are now paying the higher rate of tax but do not expect that the difference in the higher rate threshold between Scotland and the rest of the UK will lead to avoidance or evasion. The Scottish Government forecast this will generate additional revenue of £127million in 2017-18. HMRC expects to spend £26.8 million in total by 2019-20 on implementing changes in income tax rules in Scotland. The majority of the spending has been on IT costs, such as the cost of changing systems to account for the Scottish higher rate income tax threshold. HMRC has now rectified issues that led to it not identifying 420,000 people as potential Scottish taxpayers in 2015. The biggest challenge facing HMRC is maintaining accurate address records of Scottish taxpayers. Neither taxpayers nor employers are legally required to tell HMRC of changes of address. Around 80,000 people in the UK move into or out of Scotland each year. HMRC carried out an online marketing campaign in Spring 2017 promoting the message that people should inform it if they move house. It also used social media to promote this message. However, it does not know how many people it has reached or what impact it has had on public readiness to update HMRC about changes of address.
The full report is available to download from the ONS website along with a summary of the report.
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Bank of England leaves interest rates unchanged 18 December 2018
The Bank of England has taken the decision to leave the interest rates unchanged this month, following the increase last month from 0.25 per cent to 0.5 per cent.
The Telegraph has reported that this decision was taken as banks believe that Brexit-fuelled inflation was 'close to its peak' and would begin to ease back as the year ends and would be moving towards the 2 per cent target set previously after hitting 3.1 per cent in November. The Bank also said that different economic indicators suggest that growth was slowing down. It also expects gross domestic product growth in the fourth quarter to come in 'somewhat below' the previous quarter's 0.4 per cent even though global growth remains strong.
The Chartered Institute of Payroll Professionals
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