Tax collected in 2019-20 rose to £636.7bn

In 2019-20 HMRC generated tax revenues of £636.7bn from 45 million individual taxpayers and five million businesses an increase of £8.8bn on the previous year according to the department’s annual accounts. It also achieved its 2015 commitment to raise an additional £5bn a year by 2019-20 by ‘tackling tax avoidance and aggressive tax planning evasion and other non-compliance and addressing imbalances in the tax system’. On offshore compliance the report shows that since 2016 HMRC recovered £168m through the worldwide disclosure facility.

On the total tax collected income tax accounts for £336.1bn and VAT £137.4bn. Stamp taxes accounted for £15.4bn and capital gains tax raised £10bn. 

According to the report the Covid-19 pandemic has not greatly affected HMRC’s ability to achieve its 2019-20 targets because it began in the last few weeks of the financial year. Its impact is...