HMRC has published a report on the second wave of its annual survey of mid-size businesses (those with a turnover of £10m or more and/or more than 20 employees). The main research involved telephone interviews with 1,800 businesses between October and December 2016, followed by further in-depth interviews with 20 businesses in February and March 2017.
The report looks at:
experiences of mid-size businesses in dealing with HMRC;
perceptions of current tax administration;
attitudes towards tax compliance; and
awareness and perceptions of recent tax policy.
The results remained broadly consistent with the first wave of the survey, carried out between October and December 2015. See https://bit.ly/2kj8lzu.
Commenting on the report in a client briefing, Andrew Hubbard (RSM) said: ‘HMRC can draw some satisfaction from the results of the survey, which show a consistent improvement across a wide range of criteria. For example, 47% of businesses report overall confidence in the way in which HMRC is doing its job compared with only 15% (down from 19%) who said the opposite.’
Hubbard drew attention to the finding that 37% of businesses thought that tax avoidance was widespread, whereas only 20% said the same about tax evasion. This was despite evidence, including HMRC’s tax gap figures, showing that the tax lost to avoidance (£1.7bn) is much smaller than that lost to evasion (£13.8bn in all its forms). ‘So, the perception of businesses is significantly out of line with reality', Hubbard said.
HMRC has published a report on the second wave of its annual survey of mid-size businesses (those with a turnover of £10m or more and/or more than 20 employees). The main research involved telephone interviews with 1,800 businesses between October and December 2016, followed by further in-depth interviews with 20 businesses in February and March 2017.
The report looks at:
experiences of mid-size businesses in dealing with HMRC;
perceptions of current tax administration;
attitudes towards tax compliance; and
awareness and perceptions of recent tax policy.
The results remained broadly consistent with the first wave of the survey, carried out between October and December 2015. See https://bit.ly/2kj8lzu.
Commenting on the report in a client briefing, Andrew Hubbard (RSM) said: ‘HMRC can draw some satisfaction from the results of the survey, which show a consistent improvement across a wide range of criteria. For example, 47% of businesses report overall confidence in the way in which HMRC is doing its job compared with only 15% (down from 19%) who said the opposite.’
Hubbard drew attention to the finding that 37% of businesses thought that tax avoidance was widespread, whereas only 20% said the same about tax evasion. This was despite evidence, including HMRC’s tax gap figures, showing that the tax lost to avoidance (£1.7bn) is much smaller than that lost to evasion (£13.8bn in all its forms). ‘So, the perception of businesses is significantly out of line with reality', Hubbard said.
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