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HMRC Tax Gap: £59.2bn in Unpaid Tax and Still Rising
The UK tax gap is projected to hit £59.2bn in 2024/25, almost double what it was seven years ago. Every 1% costs nearly £10bn – and the gap is still widening.
Mind the tax gap... it's getting wider
The "tax gap" between what HM Revenue and Customs thinks it is owed and what it expects to receive has been growing in recent years.
After hovering close to £30billion for more than a decade, it is projected to have almost doubled in just seven years to have hit £59.2billion by 2024/25.
In percentage terms, the gap shrank from 7.5% of the nation's "theoretical tax liability" in 2005/6 down to 5.2% in 2017/18. But since then it has crept steadily back up to a projected 6.4% last year. Every 1% is now the equivalent of almost £10billion in lost tax revenue.
Mike Lewis of the think-tank TaxWatch said: "No government will ever make the tax gap go to zero, or even close to it.
"But these figures show that they have considerably further to go than previously thought"
Dan Neidle, of Tax Policy Associates, warns of "large error margins" in the Tax Gap data, even though it is "possibly the best in the world"!
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