Hagger v Murphy

The spat between Richard Murphy and Ed Hagger of HMRC about the size of the tax gap is amusing but pointless.

It is obvious the tax gap cannot even be properly defined let alone quantified. My article Difference of opinion said as much and the Treasury Select Committee agreed with me when they said in their report dated 9 March:

“We are not convinced that the process of calculating publishing and publicising an aggregate figure for the tax gap is a sensible use of HMRC’s limited resources. The aggregate tax gap figure is misleading and risks focusing HMRC on the wrong task as it only provides an order of magnitude. We recognise that it is useful for HMRC’s employees to have some idea of the difference between what HMRC should be collecting and what is collected particularly in the...