The only significant comment on tax during the Spring Statement speech itself was when the Chancellor announced plans to further close the tax gap and raise over £1 billion in additional gross tax revenue per year by 2029-30. The Spring Statement document revealed that, while some of that £1 billion will come from Making Tax Digital (see our separate article in today’s edition), most of it is expected to come from improvements in collection of tax due and tax overdue.
This will include 500 more HMRC compliance staff, building on the 5,000 extra announced at the Budget last year, and 600 more HMRC debt management staff, in addition to the 1,800 announced at the Autumn Budget. And there will be an increase in charging decisions on the most harmful fraud cases by 20 percent p.a. (500 to 600). The plans to tackle ‘phoenixism’ and the reward scheme for informants announced by the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury previously also form part of the overall plan.
A lot of the focus is going to be on wealthy individuals and the Spring Statement document sets out that “HMRC is overhauling its approach to offshore tax non-compliance by the wealthy, recruiting experts in private sector wealth management and deploying AI and advanced analytics to help identify and challenge those who try to hide their wealth, wherever they try to hide it. During the next five years, the Government will increase HMRC’s resource assigned to tackling wealthy offshore non-compliance by around 400 people, who are estimated to bring in over £500 million over the forecast period”
