More than 1,000 HMRC tax compliance staff have been deployed to work on Brexit cases © Carmen Reichman/FT
Billions in tax have been left in the UK as almost 2,300 HM Revenue & Customs tax compliance staff have been transferred to work on Brexit and Covid-19 schemes.
Victoria Atkins, the Treasury minister, admitted in response to ministerial questions that 1,043 HMRC tax compliance staff had been assigned to work on Brexit cases in the 2021-22 tax year. He added that another 1,250 staff, who normally work to recover unpaid taxes, have been moved to work on the Covid-19 loan scheme – which has been hit by fraud.
“Civil servants are moved from one crisis to another in a constant game of whack-a-mole, leaving taxes uncollected and public services underfunded,” said the Liberal Democrat Party, which questioned Atkins.
Sarah Olney, the Lib Dem Treasury spokeswoman, said the transfer of around 10 per cent of HMRC’s tax compliance offering to Brexit and Covid duties came at the cost of public services.
Atkins announced that £30.7bn had been recovered through compliance efforts in 2021-22 compared to £36.9bn in 2019-20, the year before the pandemic hit, a drop of more than £6bn.
“This Conservative government is in relentless firefighting mode because of its incompetence, from the botched EU trade deal to its unforgivable mistakes during the pandemic,” Olney said.
HMRC said: “We move resources where and when they are most needed and our performance is reflected in the fact that we collected record numbers for public services across the UK last year.
“The National Audit Office has recognized that HMRC’s compliance work delivers good value to taxpayers.”
Read more about unpaid UK tax here.