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The chairperson of the House of Commons’ public accounts committee was ‘gobsmacked’ at the amount of tax that went uncollected during 2009/10.
Margaret Hodge MP described the figure as ‘ginormous’. Her remarks followed publication of HM Treasury’s first whole-of-government accounts, the purpose of which is to help ministers and policy-makers manage national debt.
The documents are intended to complement existing fiscal indicators such as the Office of Budget Responsibility’s annual evaluation of the UK’s long-term public fiscal outlook.
On examination of the accounts, Ms Hodge said, ‘The tax not collected… is a gobsmackingly huge, ginormous figure. I totted it up, with help, as being £105 billion’.
Committee member Nick Smith interjected with ‘Blimey!’, before the chair went on to claim the Treasury had written off £10.9 billion in 2009/10 – which the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Nicholas Macpherson, who was giving evidence before the committee, agreed was ‘a lot of money’.
The figure was, in fact, a provision made by the Treasury for irrecoverable debt, not tax written off.
Sir Nicholas said the taxman had ‘improved a bit on [the debt-recovery front] of late’ and urged ministers to ‘bear it in mind also that if a company goes bankrupt, obviously HMRC is the first creditor, but often you just don’t get the money back, so you’ll never get a zero score, but we need to work on it’.
To this remark, Ms Hodge responded, ‘That’s probably as good as we’ll get.’
ARTICLE UPDATED 14.2.12 via Tax Journal
