This week's opinion: 30 January 2025

Sharp exchange needs toning down

Disagreements between HMRC officials and parliamentary committees are part and parcel of the public debate on tax. Who could forget some of the really tense exchanges during Margaret Hodge’s chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee?

Things have been much quieter in recent years so it was something of a surprise to read the very sharp exchange of letters between Sir Jim Harra and the current PAC chair.

There is no doubt that it is HMRC’s policy to reduce the number of calls it receives and divert taxpayers and other customers to online services. What has touched a nerve is whether the PAC was right to call this HMRC ‘degrading its customer services performance as a matter of policy’. Jim Harra’s letter says that he refutes this claim in the strongest possible terms. The PAC chair then criticised Harra...