Feedback

Taxpaying trust

I absolutely agree with Loughlin Hickey's views on trust or rather the lack of it between taxpayers and HMRC as reported in Taxation 1 December 2005 page 227. However to my mind there is a further issue affecting trust that HMRC need to urgently address and that is their politicisation.
Until relatively recently I believe that the general perception was that the (then) Inland Revenue generally tried to administer the tax system in a fair way and crucially was apolitical. In other words it discharged its role as a classic civil service department standing between the Executive and taxpayers. Alas no longer. We now have an organisation that at the highest level openly joins with its political masters in attempting to equate tax avoidance with evasion. Moreover when castigating perceived avoidance its pronouncements incessantly...