04 July 2003
The Inland Revenue lacks ambition in its target of persuading half of all employers to pay tax and national insurance by the due date each month, according to the Commons' Public Accounts Committee.
Its report, Inland Revenue: tax credits and tax debt management, published on July 2, said the target was 'insufficiently challenging for a flow of funds amounting to two-thirds of all Revenue tax receipts'.
But the MPs praised the Revenue's joint employer remittance initiative. The timely collection of payments has generated some £2m in interest at a cost of only £60,000.
This initiative was steered by Christine Golden (below), who in May won Public Finance's Outstanding Public Servant of the Year Award for her work on the project.
The report also criticised the Revenue for failing to quantify levels of fraud, evasion and avoidance.
This was despite the service's own prediction of more prosecutions for fraud as the new tax credit regime brings more people into the tax 'net'. It has also recruited 83 additional investigators.
The MPs urged the Revenue to compare levels and types of tax credit fraud with those for more traditional benefits to see if any trends were evident.
Total net tax receipts in 2001/02 were £148.7bn, and for National Insurance £65.3bn. Tax credits paid out totalled £5.7bn.
PFjul2003
