Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many policy evaluations of non-structural tax reliefs have been undertaken by (a) HMRC and (b) his Department in each of the last five years.

HMRC carry out evaluations either internally or through external contracts to evaluate the effectiveness of reliefs. HMRC have published evaluations of 15 tax reliefs since 2015. The reliefs evaluated account for over £11 billion of the total cost of reliefs as estimated in 2018-19.

The Government’s response to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report “Management of tax reliefs” was published on 28 September. This outlines the approach and commitments the Government has made on the monitoring and evaluation of tax reliefs. This includes new commitments to define and publish criteria for determining which reliefs to evaluate, to put in place a more structured programme of internal evaluation, and to aim to publish more of this internal analysis.

HMT and HMRC work in policy partnership to consider the effectiveness of policies as part of continuing policy maintenance and development, which forms the foundation of evidence-based advice to ministers. They do this as part of the fiscal event cycle, where tax policy changes are decided and put forward by ministers, voted on by Parliament, and legislated for through the Finance Bill.