Asked by: William Bain (Labour - Glasgow North East)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many individuals and companies have been prosecuted for tax evasion in each of the last five financial years.
Answered by David Gauke
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is not a prosecuting authority. Where cases do proceed to the criminal courts the prosecution is carried out by the relevant independent prosecuting authority. This is the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in England and Wales, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) in Scotland, and the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland (PPSNI). Prosecutions for criminal offences are only instigated against individuals, not companies.
This Government has invested over £917million over this Parliament which has seen the volume of mass market evasion prosecutions implemented as a result of HMRC Criminal Investigations increase fivefold.
The table below shows all prosecutions arising from HMRC criminal investigations including those for money laundering, other prohibitions and restrictions and other non-fiscal offences.
| Year | Total number of persons prosecuted as a result of HMRC Criminal Investigations |
| 2010-11 | 420 |
| 2011-12 | 545 |
| 2012-13 | 770 |
| 2013-14 | 915 |
The following table excludes cases prosecuted for money laundering, other prohibitions and restrictions and other non-fiscal offences as included in the table above and shows prosecutions for tax evasion offences only.
| Year | Total number of persons prosecuted for tax evasion as result of HMRC Criminal Investigations |
| 2010-11 | 372 |
| 2011-12 | 501 |
| 2012-13 | 739 |
| 2013-14 | 880 |
HMRC is not able to supply a time series of full year prosecution decisions and convictions resulting from their criminal investigations for years up to 2009–10. Complete, comparable data is only available from 2010–11 onwards.
Asked by: William Bain (Labour - Glasgow North East)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many staff in HM Revenue and Customs have been assigned to deal with (a) pursuing cases of tax evasion and (b) investigating tax avoidance schemes in each of the last four financial years.
Answered by David Gauke
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) allocates resources in a flexible manner, so that it maximises performance.
Information on the structure and organisation of HM Revenue and Customs is available at
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmrcs-annual-report-and-accounts
Asked by: William Bain (Labour - Glasgow North East)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will assess the effect on revenues to the Exchequer of buy-to-let landlords (a) being able to offset their bank interest against taxable income, (b) claiming the 10 per cent wear and tear allowance and (c) minimising their exposure to capital gains tax on the sale of properties by use of allowances or reliefs in each of the last three years.
Answered by David Gauke
The information requested is not available.
Asked by: William Bain (Labour - Glasgow North East)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, which meetings or telephone calls have taken place between Ministers and officials in his Department and (a) the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, (b) BlackRock, (c) Capital Research, (d) Fidelity Worldwide, (e) GIC, (f) Henderson, (g) JP Morgan, (h) Kuwait Investment Office, (i) Lansdowne Partners, (j) Lazard Asset Management, (k) Och Ziff, Schroders, (l) Soros, (m) Standard Life, (n) Third Point and (o) Threadneedle since 2010 and what was discussed in any such discussions.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
Treasury Ministers and officials have meetings with a wide variety of organisations in the public and private sectors as part of the process of policy development and delivery.
Details of ministerial and permanent secretary meetings with external organisations on departmental business are published on a quarterly basis and are available at:
Details of officials' meetings with external organisations are not held centrally and it would entail disproportionate cost to collate this information.
Asked by: William Bain (Labour - Glasgow North East)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many people in each (a) region and (b) constituent part of the UK were in receipt of (i) universal credit and (ii) other in-work tax credits or benefits at the beginning of the current financial year; and if he will estimate the likely numbers of such people in each of the following two financial years.
Answered by Baroness Morgan of Cotes
The provisional award Child and Working Tax Credits statistics for December 2013, split by geography, are available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/266640/1312_Geog_sent.xls
Table 2 breaks down Tax Credit claimants by Region and Table 4 by constituency. Those in receipt of WTC are presented within the ‘WTC and CTC' and ‘With no children' columns.
Figures for the current financial year are not yet available, but HMRC are due to publish the next provisional tax credits national statistics for April 2014 on 25 April.
Forecasts of tax credit claimant numbers are not available.
Official statistics on Universal Credit were published on 19 March and can be found at:
DWP announced plans for the next stage of implementation on 5 December, and these were set out in a written ministerial statement (WMS). The WMS can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/universal-credit-progress
Statistics on numbers in receipt of other benefits are available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/benefit-expenditure-and-caseload-tables-2014
Asked by: William Bain (Labour - Glasgow North East)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will estimate the average net change in household income, taking account of consequential changes to benefits and tax credits, for (a) single earner households (i) without children, (ii) with one child and (iii) with two or more children and (b) two-earner couple households (i) without children, (ii) with one child and (iii) with two or more children in receipt of universal credit or other tax credits or in-work benefits as a result of the increase in the personal allowance in (1) 2014-15, (2) 2015-16 and (3) 2016-17.
Answered by Baroness Morgan of Cotes
This information is not available, as the requested breakdowns have not been collated in this way.
The Government routinely publishes distributional analysis of the cumulative impact of all its measures – which includes any offsetting reductions to benefits as a result of changes to tax – in the “Impact on Households” document, the most recent of which accompanied Budget 2014.
Asked by: William Bain (Labour - Glasgow North East)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what discussions he has held with financial institutions based in the UK in respect of improving tax transparency in other jurisdictions in which they or their subsidiaries operate.
Answered by David Gauke
The Government carried out a formal consultation, starting in September 2013, on the Capital Requirements Directive's tax transparency proposals for financial institutions which require country-by-country reporting. The records of the consultation are publicly available.