Caroline Lucas – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Caroline Lucas on 2016-04-18.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, on how many occasions in the last five years HM Revenue and Customs officials have raised concerns internally that UK taxpayers who are customers of the (a) High Net Worth Unit and (b) Large Business Unit have received preferential or inappropriate tax treatment as a result of their position.

Mr David Gauke

HMRC has a Whistleblowing and Raising a Concern Policy. Since April 2014 concerns raised under this policy have been captured centrally but the data has been captured at a high level and does not have sufficient detail to enable HMRC to reliably identify concerns relating to customers of the High Net Worth Unit and Large Business Unit over the last 5 years.

HMRC does not offer preferential treatment to any tax payer or group. HMRC is even handed in its treatment of all customers, and manages different customers by allocating its resources to those groups which need more support or present higher risks of not meeting their tax obligations.