Hmrc

Today in audio: HMRC boss Lin Homer plays down her tax expertise

It was a bad day in front of the Public Accounts Committee for Dame Lin Homer. Despite being the outgoing boss of HMRC, Homer admitted she was no tax expert: Meanwhile, Google boss Matt Brittin also had a miserable time in front of the committee. He was laughed at during the hearing after appearing to forget how much he earned: Met Police chief Bernard Hogan-Howe went on the defensive as he came up against John Humphrys on the Today programme. He dismissed Humphrys’s claim about the police publicizing specific details of their investigation into Lord Bramall as ‘nonsense’: Jeremy Hunt vowed to impose new contracts on doctors following yesterday’s strike.

Does John McDonnell have any savings for a rainy day?

It is very sporting of John McDonnell to release his tax return for us all to inspect. It is reassuring to see that he isn’t posing as a hero of the working man while living off rent from a property portfolio, and that he hasn’t been working on the side for Vodafone or Google while laying into their tax affairs. Presumably it is the very simplicity of his tax return with which he hoped to impress us. But that is what is bothering me – the lack of entries. Apart from his income of £61,575 as an MP and a pension of £14,421 from his career in local government he

Google plays the global tax game – and charitable moves aren’t common

When George Osborne announced at the Conservative Party conference in 2014 that he would force companies such as Google, Facebook and others to pay more tax in the UK, some of those firms were privately incandescent. As a Daily Telegraph journalist covering the conference at the time, I was witness to a rare example of usually conciliatory American firms eager to critique government policy in robust Anglo-Saxon. Why, they asked, didn’t the UK see the wider benefits of having major digital employers based here, and didn’t ministers understand that they were paying their due taxes where they were founded, in America? In public, technology-friendly commentators suggested the announcement was all

If Cameron really wanted to encourage home-ownership, he would increase inheritance tax

‘The dream of a property-owning democracy is alive,’ David Cameron will say today as he launches the Conservative manifesto, promising to extend the right to buy to all 1.3 million housing association tenants. Why, then, if he wants to promote a property-owning democracy is he also proposing to raise allowances for inheritance tax, allowing people to inherit homes worth up to £1 million without paying a penny in tax? Inherited wealth is a huge factor in the concentration of property-wealth in ever fewer hands. This is what happens: middle-aged couple inherit large family home. They then sell it and reinvest the money in several buy-to-let properties, outbidding in the process

The real scandal of zero-hours contracts: HMRC’s greed

Cue the Guardian headlines of ‘exploitation’ in ‘Dickensian’ Britain. Nearly 700,000 people are now working on zero-hours contracts, a rise of 100,000 in just one year. Is that really such a problem? Not among the many people who want flexible work because they want to fit the business of earning money around studying, travelling or other careers. I agree that employers using zero hours contracts should not be allowed to place exclusivity clauses in them, preventing people working elsewhere – and which the government has already said it will ban. But most zero hours contracts do not state this – they offer two-way flexibility, with the employer not obliged to

I don’t know why I’m against tax avoidance (and I bet you don’t either)

On the face of it, the moral case against tax avoidance seems pretty straightforward. If you’re a UK taxpayer and benefit from public goods and services, then you should pay your fair share of tax. If you’re paying less than that, then you’re a free rider. You’re breaking the social contract. But what do we mean by ‘fair share’? The standard defence of tax avoidance is that it’s perfectly legal — if it wasn’t, it would be tax evasion — and the social contract only obliges people to obey the law, not to pay more tax than they have to. To maintain that people are morally obliged to pay an

Watch: Ed Miliband mucks up his lines

Ed Miliband appears to have found some safe ground for his party this week, attacking the Tories whenever he can over tax avoidance claims. If he plans to continue on this note, Mr S suggests that he picks his words with more care in the future. Speaking at the Welsh Labour conference on Saturday about his plan to launch an HMRC review, Miliband went off message rather badly. The Labour leader promised to ‘stand up for all those who stand in the way of the success of working families’. That couldn’t be what he means, could it?

How QE helped the government sell a car number plate for £400,000

Who would buy a number plate for £400,000? The answer is John Collins, a former photographer for Scottish newspapers (and a bit of a journalistic legend in his time) who is now Britain’s pre-eminent Ferrari dealer. He snapped up a ‘250’ number plate for half a million quid, after VAT. I interviewed him for my Ch4 documentary, How The Rich Get Richer (which you can still watch online for a few days, before it disappears forever). The funny thing about this recovery is that average worker is paid (significantly) less than at the time of the crash and the 1pc are not really any better-off. The ones who have done the best are

How ancient Athens beat tax avoidance

The taxman will soon be ordering those planning dodgy tax avoidance schemes to declare them beforehand and pay the full tax on them up front. Only if HMRC finally decides the scheme is legal will the tax rebate be allowed. This is a very Greek principle, which could help with the problem of bankers’ bonuses. The 4th century bc Athenian tax system was very progressive: only the richest paid any at all. In times of war, those with a certain value of declared property were liable for an emergency tax (eisphora), levied at 1 or 2 per cent. These wealthy Athenians — numbered in the thousands — were grouped into

My tax avoidance tip – win literary prizes!

David Cameron is said to want a woman to be chairman of the BBC Trust, now that Chris Patten has had to retire early because of ill health. Perhaps he has a bad conscience about what happened last time. By far the best candidate then was the runner-up, Patricia Hodgson, a distinguished BBC veteran who is committed to its virtues and has always understood its vices. She would have led a return to the BBC’s core strengths, and saved licence fee money in the process. But the government did not know what it wanted, so it chose the nearest chum, Lord Patten, who accepted in that casual and complacent spirit

Any other business: Turn down those token directorships, girls, and tell them you want to be chairman

Last Saturday was International Women’s Day, but we celebrated early in Helmsley when my Yorkshire home town was featured in national news last month as a beacon of recession-beating female entrepreneurship: 60 per cent of our new ventures have female owners. This is shaping up to be a good year for women in business generally, what with Vince Cable voicing support for all-women shortlists for directorships of FTSE 100 companies with a view to achieving 25 per cent representation by 2015, up from 20 per cent today. The Business Secretary has been busy behind the scenes, too. ‘We had a letter from Vince telling us we should appoint a female

Big Brother cash machine campaign costs nearly £100k

Remember those menacing HMRC eyes that Fraser found staring out at him from a cashpoint last month? Well, it turns out they’re a pretty expensive pair of eyes. A Freedom of Information request by the TPA’s Matt Sinclair returned this week, revealing that this cashpoint campaign on tax evasion cost just under £100,000. The response says: ‘The total media spend for the Evasion ATM advertising campaign specified in your request was £95,930.40, excluding VAT. This amount was approved by the Cabinet Office. ‘To set this figure in the correct context, the Government has made around £1 billion available to HMRC to tackle avoidance, evasion and fraud to bring in an

George Osborne needs to deliver serious tax reform

‘Isn’t there a case for looking at the whole system at some point?’ whispered Isabel on Tuesday when MPs criticised the taxman again. Well, yes, there is. Last May, the 2020 Tax Commission published its final report, setting out the moral, economic and practical case for lower, simpler taxes. The Commission deliberated for 18 months before coming to a fundamental rethink of the UK tax system. It proposed to sweep away a multitude of fiddly taxes that hit the same income on multiple occasions and replace them all with a reformed, simple Single Income Tax. Simpler taxes would mean fewer loopholes for clever accountants to exploit while freeing up HMRC

Big Brother (and HMRC) is watching you

It’s the anniversary of George Orwell’s death today – and HMRC seem to be marking the occasion with adverts in cashpoints celebrating their emerging status as the Big Brother of Britain. The above picture, which I took the other day from a cashpoint, shows a pair of female eyes staring and blinking at you as you take our you money, with the clear message from the taxman: be warned, we have the power to pry. Not yet they don’t: the Snooping Bill has been attacked in parliament and looks like it may not survive. The disingenuous rationale for the Bill was that it would help MI5 crack down on terrorists who

Headmistress Hodge grills HMRC on tax avoidance

Ever since Margaret Hodge took over the chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee, its evidence sessions have become rather lively: more like a fearsome grilling from the headmistress than a slow-moving chinwag with a group of MPs hoping for the next division bell. Hodge was on terrifying form today as senior officials from HMRC sat down to take evidence. She directed her teacherly wrath in particular at Lin Homer, chief executive and permanent secretary of HMRC, who gave the bulk of the evidence on the department’s work in tackling tax avoidance. Homer appeared rather shell-shocked by the onslaught, like a pupil trying to explain why she wasn’t wearing a tie