R&C investment essential, unions warn

16 Aug 10
The deficit can best be tackled by investing more in revenue collection, tax officials said today
By Vivienne Russell

16 August 2010

The deficit can best be tackled by investing more in revenue collection, tax officials said today.

The Associationof Revenue & Customs, a union representing senior staff in R&C including tax inspectors, accountants and lawyers, says the £50bn of taxation that goes uncollected each year represents waste on a ‘massive scale’.

The ARC claims its members’ work is highly cost-effective. An R&C offical earning £50,000 a year can be expected to bring in over £1.5m to the exchequer. But funding cuts of up to 40% at R&C would reduce these vital activities, leading to further major losses of income, the ARC is warning.

ARC president Graham Black said: ‘It is madness to reduce R&C still further when it has already suffered 30% cuts in recent years.

‘With more staff we can bring in more of the tax that is legally due, and deal with the tax cheats who are putting the burden onto everyone else.

‘The amount of money spent on dealing with the tax gap has almost halved since 2006/07 from £3.6bn to £1.9bn, and at the same time the revenues collected by R&C have fallen by £25bn.’

Black added that every pound spent on dealing with tax cheats would bring in at least an additional £30 in revenue. ‘That is an investment opportunity any logical person would take.’

ARC members are due to make their case to MPs in a meeting at Westminster early next month.

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