HM Treasury is to provide HMRC with an additional 2,250 tax inspectors in the crackdown on tax avoidance by the UK's more wealthy.
These recruits will join a new unit that will concentrate on anti-evasion and avoidance targeting around 350,000 taxpayers. More than 1,000 of the new vacancies have already been advertised.
At the Liberal Democrat’s annual conference last month, Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, singled out the 350,000 wealthiest taxpayers who either pay or should pay the 50% rate of tax and vowed that they will be hunted down until they pay their fair share.
Mr Alexander confirmed that fair taxation of the wealthiest was key to the coalition's deficit reduction plan but that they would be willing to consider any better suggestions.
Closing the tax gap, the difference between HMRC's reckoning and the actual amount collected, is a priority for the government and only last year the Chancellor pledged £917 million of funding to assist HMRC's assault on tax avoidance and reaching the target of an additional £7 billion of revenue by 2015. According to Mr Alexander, the government is well on their way to raising £2 billion of this in this year.
The amount of uncollected tax in 2009-10 was £35 billion, which was an improvement of £4 billion from the previous year. Although this compares more favourably with some countries who publish their tax gaps, it still represents a sizeable revenue loss that this country can ill afford to forsake.
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