Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much the tax gap was in each of the last nine years; and what estimate he has made of the tax gap that was due to tax evasion in each of the last nine years.

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) publish estimates of the tax gap in Measuring Tax Gaps each year. The 2013 edition presents a time series of tax gaps from 2005-06 to 2011-12, which can be found at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/249537/131010_Measuring_Tax_Gaps_ACCESS_2013.pdf

HMRC has also produced an illustrative breakdown of the tax gap by behaviour, including evasion, for the years 2007-08, 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12. These are not comparable year on year because the data available doesn’t enable estimates to be updated for earlier years. Table 1 below shows the estimates of evasion published in previous HMRC publications for these years.

Table 1: Estimates of evasion previously published

Previous editions of ‘Measuring Tax Gaps’ can be accessed at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/measuring-tax-gaps

The HMRC publication ‘Protecting Tax Revenues 2009’, can be accessed at the following link: (http://irscot.inrev.gov.uk/budget10/pbr/00notices/docs/5450_other.pdf)

The 2014 edition of Measuring Tax Gaps, covering estimates for 2012-13, will be published on 16 October.