Philip Davies
Main Page: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)Department Debates - View all Philip Davies's debates with the HM Treasury
Small Businesses: Tax Reporting
Philip Davies Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Like the hon. Gentleman, I and, more importantly, my constituents would be fascinated to learn how increasing the rate of reporting to quarterly—whether that involves a full report or an update—reduces the amount of administration faced by businesses. That is a crucial point. Did he hear the estimates at the time of the Chancellor’s announcement that HMRC would collect an additional £600 million as a result of the policy? Is the purpose of the change really to increase tax returns from small businesses? Deals such as that with Google, which was the subject of today’s urgent question, have caused great unease and real anger not just in my constituency, but right across the country.
Philip Davies (in the Chair)
Order. Before Mr Kerevan resumes his speech, may I say that interventions should be somewhat shorter than they have been?
George Kerevan
I am happy to reinforce the hon. Gentleman’s point. Indeed, various Treasury papers suggest that the shift towards a paperless tax system will increase receipts by about £600 million. That is not a bad thing, and no one would oppose it if it happened, but the issue is that the Minister and HMRC are rushing to judgment in introducing the proposed system. They think that moves to put it in place will be so advanced by 2020 that they will be able to start instructing small businesses to update quarterly.
Buried in the small print of last November’s Treasury press notice is a suggestion as to one of the advantages that will come from the proposal:
“HMRC expects the number of calls”
to its various call centres
“to reduce from 38 million in 2015-16”
to a mere 15 million by 2020. Magically, as a result of the electronic vision being presented to us, about 23 million phone calls will no longer be made to HMRC. Does anyone here, the Minister included, actually believe those numbers?
In the run-up to introducing a new system, the likelihood is that things will go wrong. If we are lucky, we might make something like the proposed saving in calls 10 years from now, but I doubt that that will happen between now and 2020. I have great respect for the Minister, but I would like to hear him swear on his heart that he actually thinks we will deliver 23 million fewer calls.