Take from the Poor, but not the Rich: Tax Authorities Accused of not Being 'on the Side' of Individuals and Small Firms

HMRC ‘holds back’ from pursuing big avoiders, says Commons committee, and public pays the price

Britain’s tax authorities are accused by Parliament today of not being “on the side” of individuals and small firms who pay their fair share of money to the Government.

In a highly critical report, Westminster’s spending watchdog claims officials are “holding back” from using legal sanctions to recover money from large companies which use aggressive schemes to minimise their tax bills.

As a result the public at large is being forced to shoulder more of the burden of paying for public services while it has become “easier” for companies to avoid paying their way. The Public Accounts Committee said that despite countless pledges to crack down on tax avoidance, HMRC actually collected less tax in real terms last year than it did in 2011-12. At the same time the “tax gap” between what HMRC estimated it was owed last year and what it actually collected rose by £1bn to £35bn.

The committee urged HMRC to be much more willing to pursue prosecutions against large businesses and rich individuals who use loopholes illegitimately to minimise their tax bill, or who knowingly mislead HMRC or withhold information.

And it strongly criticised the organisation for overestimating by £2.5bn the amount of money it expected to collect from a deal with the Swiss authorities to tackle offshore tax evasion.

“We were astonished that HMRC could not give any reasons for such a shortfall,” the committee’s chairman Margaret Hodge said.

But in a scathing response to the report, HMRC rejected the PAC’s findings and accused it of “selective and misleading use of figures”. It said it could not collect tax that was not legally due “however much the committee might want us to”.

“The committee’s unjustified criticism risks undermining the confidence that the compliant majority of UK taxpayers have in the excellent work [that HMRC] does,” said a spokesman.

The PAC report comes after a series of public hearings with senior tax officials who were accused of failing aggressively to pursue large businesses with legal firepower in the way in which they went after small businesses and individuals. During the hearings, senior HMRC officials admitted they had not attempted to estimate how much tax revenue was lost through aggressive tax avoidance schemes such as those employed by multinational companies such as Google, Starbucks and Amazon.

“HMRC holds back from using the full range of sanctions at its disposal,” said Ms Hodge. “It pursues tax owed by the smaller businesses but seems to lose its nerve when it comes to mounting prosecutions against multinational corporations.”

The committee also warned that in seeking to make the UK more attractive to business, HMRC has not considered what impact changes to the tax regime would have on the behaviour of large businesses in the future.

SRS 3

Translation of Newspaper Articles

Social problems: Education

Assignment: translate the newspaper article – Anachronistic and iniquitous, grammar schools are a blot on the British education system (The Independent, Wednesday 18 December 2013)

Aim: to apply theoretical knowledge into practice translating newspaper articles.

Literature and resources:

• Lecture 8 - Translation of Newspaper Articles/Headlines;

• И.Р. Гальперин Стилистика текста, М., 1990;

• www.multitran.ru

• www.macmillandictionary.com

Wednesday 18 December 2013