This week the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced that Labour would act to tackle tax dodging. HMRC claims £36bn was lost to the exchequer last year simply because people do not pay their tax. Shockingly, that figure is £5bn higher than that lost in the previous year. It represents a third of total government spending on education. It’s a scandal that we must attack.
We also know that £36bn is a very conservative estimate of the gap between what the exchequer does collect and what is due – what is known as the tax gap. For instance, many wealthy individuals hide their assets in secret trusts they set up overseas in British tax havens – and they pay no tax on that hidden wealth.
