The “tax gap” is the shortfall between the amount of tax expected in Treasury coffers and the sums actually received.
The Government is always saying it is closing the gap, down to £35billion last year.
Maybe that explains why there are fewer tax inspectors working on tax avoidance by the wealthy than there are people chasing so-called benefit cheats for taking pennies and pounds more than they are due from the social security system.
It is a ridiculous set of affairs not to be pursuing these high-value tax avoiders with more human resources than those involved in benefit fraud.
Glasgow MP Chris Stephens is right – the Government has to give an account of itself and its tax and fraud priorities.
The HMRC includes estimates for losses caused by tax evasion, avoidance, the hidden economy, errors and other non-payments.
But it does not take into account estimates for tax losses caused by multinational corporations such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Starbucks.
These international businesses are able to lawfully use complex structures to shift taxable income from the UK to their operations overseas.
It’s time to clamp down on the big tax losses and match the resources pursuing the wealthy with those spent prosecuting the poor.
Leading the way
There is growing evidence of a disturbing link between heading footballs on a regular basis and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.
Experts at Glasgow University, led by consultant neuropathologist Dr Willie Stewart, compared the general population to the deaths of more than 7000 professionals who played between 1900 and 1976.
The results showed footballers had about a three-and-a-half times higher rate of death from these types of disease.
Against this backdrop, the SFA has announced a ban on kids heading balls will be in play by March.
This follows the move by Stenhousemuir FC, which already enforces a heading ban on under-11s.
Let’s hope we can lead the world in protecting our children from the worst effects of the beautiful game.
