Lord Dubs
Main Page: Lord Dubs (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Dubs's debates with the HM Treasury
(12 years ago)
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Lord Newby
My Lords, the Government are fully committed to tackling avoidance and evasion wherever it occurs. HMRC is to receive additional investment of £77 million to expand its anti-avoidance and anti-evasion activity, including resources to identify and challenge multinationals’ transfer pricing arrangements. Following the Chancellor’s call for international co-operation to strengthen international tax standards, the UK, Germany and France have pledged resources to the OECD to speed up work to tackle profit-shifting and base erosion at the global level.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that if companies and individuals complied with the letter and spirit of the law, the Treasury would be £32 billion better off. Is he aware that the public are extremely angry about this and that the whole situation is grossly unfair to those companies that pay their taxes, such as John Lewis and Marks & Spencer? Is he further aware that the army of bankers, accountants and lawyers advising those companies on how to evade their taxes are the same people the Government employ for their own business? Will he take action in the tax havens that make all this possible?
Lord Newby
My Lords, HMRC does indeed estimate that the tax gap in 2010-11 was £32 billion, which represents 6.7% of total tax due. The tax gap as a percentage of tax due has fallen from 8.2% since 2004. It is not good enough but it is going in the right direction. The absolute determination of the Government to bear down on this was evidenced by the decision we took last year to divert £900 million into this area, which has since been supplemented by an additional £77 million to increase the specialist abilities within HMRC to deal with some extremely clever advisers and companies that seek to minimise their tax.