Finance Bill

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

I will speak to a number of amendments in my name and those of my hon. Friends. New clause 12 would require the Government to report within one year on the impact of the criminal offences relating to offshore income assets and activities created by clause 165. Amendments 167 and 168 would make it compulsory, rather than just possible, for HMRC to publish the names of those who hide behind entities such as companies and trusts when committing offshore tax evasion. Amendments 171 to 173 would expand the definition of “reasonable” referred to in clause 165 to include

“an honest belief that all of the information included was true and accurate”,

because the Opposition are concerned that the category of reasonableness is, on its own, far too subjective. Amendments 163 and 164 would strengthen the penalty for enablers of offshore tax evasion to include 100% of the fees received by the enabler of the service—for the lawyers in the Chamber, the principle of just enrichment, as it were. The aim of that is to neutralise somewhat the commercial aspect of the tax avoidance industry.

Amendments 165 and 166 would increase the minimum penalties for inaccuracy, failure to notify a charge to tax or failure to deliver a return, in relation to offshore matters and transfers, by 15% rather than the Government’s suggested 10%. In their consultation “Strengthening civil deterrents for offshore evaders” the Government considered increasing the minimum penalties by 15% rather than 10%. These are probing amendments to find out why the Government opted for a smaller increase than the one that they initially considered.

Up next we have amendment 170, which would increase from 10% to 15% the asset-based penalty introduced by schedule 22. The Government’s consultation on this penalty cited different rates for such asset-based penalties across the world, including in Italy where the penalty is up to 15%. As I will expand on in a moment, the Opposition think that we must be world leaders on stamping out tax avoidance, so I think our penalty should be, at the very least, on a par with precedents across the world. Those penalties are a start, but I would add that in the light of the latest Government consultation on tackling offshore tax evasion, which would introduce a separate offence not covered by the Bill, there appears to be a clear move by stakeholders to suggest that even higher penalties are required. I urge the Government to consider those suggestions carefully.

I confirm Labour’s support of cross-party amendment 145 on public country-by-country reporting, which was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). I place on record my thanks to her for the hard work that she has put into pursuing this important issue. It is testimony to that hard work that many Members across the House—including members of the Public Accounts Committee and more than 60 MPs from eight political parties, as my right hon. Friend illustrated—and organisations outside this House have supported this amendment. I will not go over the ground that she has covered, because she has put her case articulately. The enabling power contained in the amendment would give the UK scope to strengthen its influence on international tax transparency negotiations, and it would build greater consensus.

Finally, new clause 13 would require a comprehensive report into the UK tax gap, which is defined as the difference in any financial year between the amount of tax HMRC should be entitled to collect and the tax that it collects. Such difference derives from tax avoidance and evasion. The contents of the report would be as set out in the new clause, and it would have to be carried out in consultation with stakeholders. It would examine a number of areas relating to tax avoidance in the hope that the Government might review their policy and tailor it to deal adequately with such issues.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

Does not new clause 13 expose the idiocy of closing HMRC offices, as the Government are planning to do to 90% of them? Would it not also allow Members to look at the number of staff in HMRC dealing with tax avoidance and set that against the 3,765 staff in the Department for Work and Pensions who deal with £1.2 billion of so-called social security fraud?

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. The report is intended to highlight any deficiencies that might be found in HMRC’s resources or structures that affect its ability to tackle tax avoidance.

As Members who read new clause 13 will see, the part relating to HMRC goes into a lot of detail. Briefly, however, the report would be required to cover figures for the UK tax gap for the past five financial years; details of the model used by HMRC for estimating the UK tax gap; an assessment of HMRC’s efficacy in dealing with the UK tax gap; details of the tax revenue benefits for companies engaged in public procurement that are registered in the UK only for tax purposes; an assessment of the efficacy of the general anti-abuse rule in discouraging tax avoidance; consideration of the benefits for tax revenue of introducing a set of minimum standards in tax transparency for all British Crown dependencies and overseas territories; and, finally, an assessment of the impact on tax revenues of establishing a public register of all trusts located within the UK, British Crown dependencies and overseas territories.

The new clauses and amendments we have tabled are necessary now more than ever. I appreciate that we have limited time today, so we will push to a vote only new clause 13. As I have said, we will support my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley should she wish to press her amendment 145. We also support new clause 7, which has been articulately outlined by the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin).

On the other amendments, I hope that the Minister will listen very carefully to the comments throughout my speech. The Government have ample opportunity outside the scope of the Bill—if, indeed, there is the will—to implement many of my requests. I will explain the rationale behind our various amendment.

The law on tax avoidance has been greatly influenced by the words of Lord Tomlin in the case of the Inland Revenue Commissioners v. the Duke of Westminster in 1935. Lord Tomlin decided that it was the right of every Englishman to organise his affairs so as to minimise his liability for tax. Sadly, that idea fuels the tax avoidance industry even today. In this age of so-called austerity, with pressure on the NHS, the armed forces, our teachers and our young people—the list goes on—quite frankly it is not acceptable for people to seek to avoid their taxes.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House have come to agree that tax avoidance should be fought. The trouble is that this Government have failed to tackle the problem head-on, but simply tinkered here and there with piecemeal bits of legislation, and this Finance Bill is no different. We need a real commitment from this Government to an overarching strategy that provides genuine legal teeth to tackle the millionaire tax dodgers and the advisers surrounding them.

To take hon. Members on a little historical, magical mystery tour, in the 1980s, judges, not Parliament, developed a principle that put a dent in the tax avoidance industry—the Ramsay doctrine. The principle provided that artificial tax avoidance schemes should be analysed as a whole, not analysed by each piece separately. That meant that clever tax schemes could be dismantled by taking out all the artificial elements, with what was left being taxed as though the artificial elements had never existed. The effect on tackling tax avoidance schemes was huge.

Unfortunately, case law has moved on over the years, and we have now returned to a world in which tax law is considered to be entirely a matter of statutory interpretation. There are no general principles at work that can be used when interpreting legislation to combat tax avoidance in practice. In addition, our tax statutes are extraordinarily long and very detailed. That is meat and drink to tax specialists. Any Member of the House my age or above may remember the “Peanuts” cartoons. In one episode, Linus says, “Now I know the rules, I know how to get round them.” Linus could have been a tax lawyer.

Tax lawyers love playing with the rules, and we should not underestimate the expertise and determination of the tax avoidance community. In fact, one tax law specialist recently told me something really harrowing about a firm of accountants in the 1990s. A specific piece of legislation had been drafted to tax any trust that shifted offshore. An exception to that rule arose if one of the trustees died and the trust shifted offshore as a consequence. Those accountants canvassed a cancer ward to see whether the relatives of people dying of cancer would be prepared to have their dying family member signed up to act as a trustee of their clients’ trusts. They sought reassurances that the patient would die soon and promised to pay a small fee. That is an extreme case, but is an example of the depths to which people will sink to avoid paying their taxes and of how loopholes can be found in the depths of legislation.