Whose money?

Is the Revenue doing all it can to call in the money that taxpayers owe? ALLISON PLAGER reports.

£219 BILLION IN tax and National Insurance was collected by the Inland Revenue from 30 million taxpayers in 2002-03. That sounds like an awful lot of money until you learn that at the end of March 2003 taxpayers owed the Revenue some £14 billion (or six per cent) and a year later £12 billion was waiting to be collected. Certainly some of the tax outstanding is soon paid following the issue of automatic demand letters but it is estimated that at the end of 2002-03 around £4 billion was over one year old and at the end of 2003-04 the equivalent figure was £3 billion.

Furthermore not all outstanding debt is collected. The Revenue wrote off tax debts of £523 million in the year...