Loan Charge
Debate between David Davis and Rushanara Ali
Mr Davis
No, I am afraid not.
That is why we find not city slickers, bankers or finance specialists, but nurses, doctors, locums and careworkers caught up in this. All those people will never have the resources to pay back this money. It does not matter whether it is over two, five, seven or 10 years, they will just never have it.
Many witnesses said they had declared the schemes to HMRC. This really is the criminal aspect of this: someone declares a scheme, and then 20 years later or 10 years later, HMRC comes back and says, “Sorry, we haven’t closed your year, and you can pay now”. They are being asked to pay not a small amount, but £20,000 or £30,000 in the case of some my constituents.
What the Committee found is very important because, again, where does the blame lie? I think part of the blame lies with HMRC, but part of the blame lies with the employers. Many people have said that that is where HMRC should focus its effort, but the House of Lords Committee found
“little evidence of action taken against those who promote disguised remuneration schemes.”
It went on to say that
“HMRC appears to be prioritising recovery of tax revenue over justice”.
That point is central to today.
The Committee noted that the people involved were unusual subjects of this sort of recovery, because of the nature of their employment and so on. It said that of course these disguised remuneration schemes are “unacceptable tax avoidance”, but it also said:
“The loan charge is, however, retrospective in its effect.”
This House was formed in order to challenge the King, in his day, on the justice of the taxes he was demanding, and to put their own concerns back to the King to get them corrected before we paid the taxes. We should not forget the fundamental reason for this House’s existence, which is to look after our constituents in the face of demands from the state.
The Committee made a recommendation that HMRC should in future make clear public statements when it is looking at avoidance schemes. Because of the fact that so much of the burden of the decision falls on HMRC, it should make it clear to the public at large and anybody in those schemes when it is investigating them.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Davis
No, I am afraid not. I have a couple of minutes left and I am going to come to an end in a second. That is the House of Lords’ view, and it was very critical. For a House of Lords report, it was an incredibly critical report.
Let me turn to the motion and the all-party group’s approach. As I say, it is incredibly reasonable: let us have a review—a judge-led review or whatever—and take some time to sort this out. I am afraid I think that that is altogether too reasonable in the light of the pressure that is being created by this policy. People who are under this policy now are suffering mental strain day in, day out. They are not people who are ever going to find £20,000, and to say to them that they have five years to pay if they are—as one of my constituents is—on a minimum pension, is meaningless. It just means his house or his car has to go, and his family is breaking up under the strain.
My view is very simple: this should not be retrospective at all before 2017—at all—because there is no reason for it whatsoever, given the behaviour of HMRC. If we do not get something like that—I say this to the Treasury, and they can add this into their accounting—I, and I suspect many others in this House, will start to pursue a right in law for every citizen that limits the extent to which the state, and particularly HMRC, can take any retroactive action whatsoever against persons, not companies such as the Vodafones, but against individuals, because it seems to me that we owe a duty to our constituents to have some certainty from the state in relation to the taxes they pay.