This week's opinion: 9 January 2025

Voluntary payments of tax should be encouraged

I was intrigued by the reference to voluntary restitution in the notes to the research and development disclosure service launched on the last day of 2024 (tinyurl.com/hmrcrandddisclserv) – you may recall that we had a question about voluntary restitution in the Readers’ forum on 21 November. The form allows taxpayers to repay the amount voluntarily: the accompanying notes say that ‘HMRC may accept a voluntary proposal if we agree that the relevant legal time limits to recover unpaid tax have passed’. That is interesting. I can’t believe that HMRC would ever refuse to accept voluntary payments – indeed I’m not sure that there is a power for it to do so.

This sort of disclosure service is well worth supporting. HMRC needs to make it as easy as possible for people to settle their affairs once they realise that something is wrong. I remember...