By Vivienne Russell
24 March 2011
The chancellor’s ambitions to curb tax evasion and avoidance are too ‘cautious and conservative’, tax professionals have claimed.
George Osborne said his March 23 Budget did more to clamp down on tax avoidance than any other Budget of recent years.
A total of £14bn was lost through tax avoidance and evasion in 2008, according to Revenue & Customs figures cited by Osborne. A new Treasury paper. Tackling tax avoidance, sets out measures the government will take to recoup some of these losses. These include tightening capital gains rules for companies and ending the practice of disguised remuneration, through which highly paid employees are offered tax-free lifetime loans that are never repaid.
The chancellor said the changes would bring in an additional £4bn over the life of the Parliament.
Speaking to Public Finance after the Budget statement, Graham Black, president of the Association of Revenue & Customs, which represents senior R&C staff, said the Budget was a missed opportunity.
‘We welcome a number of the specific measures, but they’ve been too cautious and conservative in their ambitions on tax evasion and avoidance. We think they could have done a lot more.’
He added that cuts to R&C made it ‘harder’ for tax professionals to close the tax gap.
‘When you look at areas like large business, we’ll actually be cutting resources over the next three or four years and that seems an odd thing to be doing at a time like this,’ Black said.
The ARC has called for investment of £260m in R&C, which it estimates would bring in £6bn in lost revenue.
