Tax experts say shortfall between expected income and actual receipts underplays true scale of fraud in 2020-21 financial year
The government’s tax collectors were accused on Thursday of underestimating the tax gap – the difference between the expected income for the exchequer and actual receipts – after official figures showed it was unchanged during the first year of the pandemic.
HMRC said there was a 5.1% shortfall worth £32bn in the 2020-21 financial year, the same as the period before the pandemic took effect. It said fraud accounted for £2bn of the total – despite widespread concerns that tens of billions of pounds worth of pandemic spending by the government was lost to fraud.
