6 ms·

HMRC 'plans to share tax data with private firms'

60 points by rb2e 12y ago

SixSigma 12y ago
Wouldn't it be better to allow unfettered access to tax data for everyone, on everyone?
- bananas 12y ago
  As someone who was under investigation a few years ago by the HMRC who thought I was doing something naughty, which I wasn't, absolutely no flipping way. Tax is one of the few areas in which you are morally and legally guilty until proven innocent (asset freezes and Jimmy Carr for example).
  - UVB-76 12y ago
    How do you mean? To all intents and purposes Jimmy Carr was "guilty" of participating in a tax avoidance scheme, and admitted wrongdoing.
    - ZenPro 12y ago
      In what way is avoiding tax through a legal vehicle guilty of a crime? Do you volunteer extra tax when you don't have to? Tax avoidance/tax efficiency is not tax evasion.
      - matthewmacleod 12y ago
        I'm pretty sure that in the UK, participants in tax avoidance schemes are required to log details of them with HMRC under the DOTAS (Disclosure of Tax Avoidance Schemes) rules. There are a variety of tests which determine whether or not a particular arrangement is disclosable.
        ZenPro 12y ago
        You do now. You didn't have to then. My father in law is a senior partner in a national accountancy firm. He refers to it is as the Jimmy Carr disclosure.
      - UVB-76 12y ago
        I did not say Jimmy Carr admitted criminal wrongdoing. I am well aware of the distinction between tax avoidance and tax evasion, but in many jurisdictions (including the UK) there is legislation that also renders tax avoidance schemes illegal if the arrangements are sufficiently artificial or abusive. Since the Carr affair, HMRC have implemented the General Anti-Abuse Rule (GAAR). Although it has not, to my knowledge, been tested at a tax tribunal, I am fairly confident the arrangement Carr entered into would be deemed abusive under this new legislation.
        ZenPro 12y ago
        Previous comment used the term legally guilty. You then referenced Jimmy Carr as an example and used the words guilty inferring legal and moral guilt. He was guilty of neither but he had a public persona to protect and admit wrongdoing where none existed. If subsequent legislation attempts to limit TAS with the "fair admittance" rule of checking the box it has no retrospective bearing on the conduct of Jimmy Carr.
    - bananas 12y ago
      Avoiding tax is not illegal. Most business do this even by paying dividends versus salary for example. Evading tax is. He was avoiding tax.
      - james1071 12y ago
        What is your point about Jimmy Carr? He stopped using an avoidance scheme once it was reported in the media-noting to do with the HMRC.
      - swombat 12y ago
        It's more complicated than that. He was using a so-called "Registered Tax-Avoidance Scheme" (TAS for short). TAS's are basically entire schemes built around a loophole in the tax law. Each time the government announces a new Budget, they include a raft of measures to try and plug these holes, but there are companies that specialise in finding these loopholes and helping their clients exploit them (for a fairly sizeable fee). They pay some top lawyers to provide a quote that "yes, damnit, the loophole exists", and then they go on their merry dance to acquire clients to make use of those loopholes. As my accountant explained it to me at the time (before I decided to stay the hell away from those things), the difference between regular tax avoidance and registered tax avoidance schemes is that in the first case, you and your accountant think you're paying a fair amount (and HMRC may disagree), whilst in the second case, you, your accountant, and HMRC all know you're playing dirty. Example: one of the more popular TAS's was to set up an employee benefits trust, with you (the business owner) as the beneficiary. Payments to the trust could be seen as staffing costs, thereby attracting no Corporation Tax on profit. The trust would then loan you the money at zero interest and with no expectation of it ever being repaid, thereby avoiding income tax. Bingo - zero tax! But obviously exploiting a hole in the rules. This has been progressively clamped down on - first by requiring people using TAS's to declare that they are using them (which allows HMRC to target them more effectively), and in the latest Budget, by requiring users of TAS's to pay the tax first as if they weren't using the TAS and then argue with HMRC over whether the TAS is valid. I think overall the TAS thing is on the way out... but it's really worth drawing the line between regular tax avoidance (i.e. reducing your tax using very legit mechanisms like capital allowances, R&D tax credits, dividends/salary splits, etc) vs registered tax avoidance schemes, which are just dirty business. As far as I know, Jimmy Carr was using a registered tax avoidance scheme.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  In Norway, tax returns are public. It's a good system.
  - klausjensen 12y ago
    I feel it is a violation of my privacy. It is a disgusting system.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
      I like it. It means people know how much others are earning. Wealth should be transparent.
      - k-mcgrady 12y ago
        >> "I like it. It means people know how much others are earning." That might seem fine if you are earning a decent salary but if you are working a shitty job to make ends meet it can be embarrassing. It's the main reason people find it rude to discuss each others salaries.
        TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
        That's the whole point. It means people are more acutely aware of the inequality of income in society.
        judk 12y ago
        People are trained to find itnrue so that high earners don't feel uncomfortable being at the top of inequality.
- antocv 12y ago
  Swedish tax records are public, but difficult to access, I think its a great system, if youre really curious you can go or call tax office and ask for anybodies tax numbers thus know how much they earn. Its part of a transparent and open society. But there is no webservice somewhere where people can look on a map or search easily and so on. If you take it to next level you can buy a book containing all names addreses and taxable income and capital for an area. good system because its public like the records and not private.
bananas 12y ago
Here we go again. Probably some greedy fuck of a civil servant (probably one of Cameron's ex-Eton buddies or friendly conservative slime like Guake) working out how to sell out our infrastructure to industry and make a larger bonus this year whilst doing fuck all. Hopefully the last non-political unit (the ICO) will stamp on this quickly.
davedx 12y ago
Conservative public sector policy is thoughtless Thatcherism: "Sell all the things!" (Forgive the meme)
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  Well, they're already selling medical records to private firms in England. Since they got away with that, they probably just want to sell as much other data as possible. EDIT: England, not England and Wales.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    No they aren't. There's a point where hyperbole becomes sensationalising, and where sensationalising becomes deceptive.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - michaelt 12y ago
      The medical records of every NHS hospital patient in the country have been sold for insurance purposes, The Telegraph can reveal. [...] a report by a major society of actuaries discloses that it was able to obtain 13 years of hospital data [...] covering all hospital in-patient stays between 1997 and 2010 to track the medical histories of patients, identified by date of birth and postcode. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10656893/Hospital-records-of-all-NHS-patients-sold-to-insurers.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10656893/Hospit... And the best part? It only cost £2,200.
      - notahacker 12y ago
        The actual report is here. http://www.sias.org.uk/data/papers/SIASDec2013Paper/DownloadPDF http://www.sias.org.uk/data/papers/SIASDec2013Paper/Download... It's reasonably obvious that inferences can be made from this that will affect private sector insurance premiums, but highly unlikely that anything they've done with the data could be linked to specific individuals, even though the original anonymisation was unlikely to have been sufficient In the interests of balance, it's worth pointing out the non-profit organization linked to the insurance sector in question specifically denies some of the claims made in the Telegraph article: http://www.actuaries.org.uk/news/press-releases/articles/telegraph-article-rebuttal http://www.actuaries.org.uk/news/press-releases/articles/tel...
DrJokepu 12y ago
No offence to HMRC staff but I'm not sure if I really trust the Civil Service to decide what "generates clear public benefits" and if there are "robust safeguards in place"!
- jasiek 12y ago
  Given what happened with the NHS data, neither do I.
shocks 12y ago
Off topic: Did anyone else notice that the bbc.co.uk website is asking for a certificate for identification?
- askew 12y ago
  Yes - I keep getting this. It's rather peculiar.
- Joeboy 12y ago
  Yep. I clicked cancel and decided not to worry about it for now. I'm interested to know what it's about though.
swombat 12y ago
Looks like the uk government has found an entirely novel angle on the concept of "transparency"! Between that and the NHS data and their reaction to Snowden, the meaning of transparency in the uk is clearly "we'll release all your private individual data while keeping secret everything that we do"!
UVB-76 12y ago
I'd rather an all or nothing approach to these kind of information sharing arrangements. If information is to be shared, it should be made freely available to all, not just to corporations that are able to shell out large sums for it.
- 7952 12y ago
  I regularly buy data from government departments and it is extremely difficult. They are not commercially minded and regularly undercharge. You have to chase them for weeks to get anything done and the billing arrangements are complicated. In my experience UK government is terrible at selling anything. An API for tax data would have lots of possible applications, as a way of checking income for example. But it is doubtful that the government would ever have the skills to pull it off. They should either sell the data through a competent third party or make it open.
  - swombat 12y ago
    Not true - there is one team in Government that could do this: the gov.uk team. http://gov.uk http://gov.uk is hands down the best government site I've ever seen. I'd trust those guys to be able to deliver it.
    - jasiek 12y ago
      I takes a lot more than a team of dedicated people to bring something in government into completion. First - there has to be a political consensus within the department to make things happen, then a business case needs to be written and approved. A budget needs to be assigned (where to get the money is another problem), and it needs to be decided that it will be built in-house. Only then, you can actually start building things - the process above takes anywhere from 6 months to a year, sometimes more.
      - swombat 12y ago
        I never said that was all it took (you seem to be replying to a straw man), but it is a necessary element.
0161 12y ago
This story broke last night on the Guardian website: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/18/hmrc-to-sell-taxpayers-data http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/18/hmrc-to-sell... Although it's not clear that it has come from an official HMRC statement (I couldn't find anything on its website), the timing of this -- the Friday evening / Saturday morning of the Easter bank holiday weekend -- feels like someone finding a good time to bury controversial news.
shubb 12y ago
It would be nice if UK.gov could make the public financial data of firms available in an open way. You can buy a firms financials from the government for £1 a company, or buy a full dataset for several thousand pounds. For little people wanting to do statistical analysis, that is unaffordable. An awesome startup here, duedil, somehow got the rights to the data, and makes it available for viewing through a lovely website. But giving some company monopoly on public data is really messed up. Good on duedil, but the government is really failing by putting them in that position.
- UVB-76 12y ago
  I don't think there's anything special about what DueDil are doing. Basic company information is public domain, and available to download in bulk [1] or via URI [2] Companies House also offer a free app for iOS and Android [3] providing some additional info, e.g. details of directors and filing histories. If you delve into it, that is all served by a JSON API. Accounts data has recently been opened up for free [4], providing info on about 60% of companies (all those that file accounts electronically, from what I gather) but the data is in (i)XBRL format, and I don't know how amenable it is to statistical analysis. Documents are my biggest pain at the moment. I believe annual returns, etc. should be public domain, and I think it is wrong that Companies House have the authority to charge for access to them. [1] http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_output.html http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_output.html [2] http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/miscellaneous/URI.shtml http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/miscellaneous/URI.sht... [3] http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/mobile-app/ http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/mobile-app/ [4] http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_accountsdata.html http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_accountsdata.html
  - shubb 12y ago
    Thank's for the links. It was the annual returns that I was talking about. I was concerned that they might have sold the documents to Duedil cheap in a bulk deal that the public didn't have access to. However, looking into how Duedil got its dataset, it appears they buy the digitised data from Experian and friends, who get it from who knows where.
michaelt 12y ago
If you think this stuff is worth signing an online petition over: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/dont-sell-our-tax-data https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/dont-sell-our-tax-...

60 points by rb2e 12y ago

SixSigma 12y ago

Wouldn't it be better to allow unfettered access to tax data for everyone, on everyone?

bananas 12y ago
As someone who was under investigation a few years ago by the HMRC who thought I was doing something naughty, which I wasn't, absolutely no flipping way. Tax is one of the few areas in which you are morally and legally guilty until proven innocent (asset freezes and Jimmy Carr for example).
- UVB-76 12y ago
  How do you mean? To all intents and purposes Jimmy Carr was "guilty" of participating in a tax avoidance scheme, and admitted wrongdoing.
  - ZenPro 12y ago
    In what way is avoiding tax through a legal vehicle guilty of a crime? Do you volunteer extra tax when you don't have to? Tax avoidance/tax efficiency is not tax evasion.
    - matthewmacleod 12y ago
      I'm pretty sure that in the UK, participants in tax avoidance schemes are required to log details of them with HMRC under the DOTAS (Disclosure of Tax Avoidance Schemes) rules. There are a variety of tests which determine whether or not a particular arrangement is disclosable.
      - ZenPro 12y ago
        You do now. You didn't have to then. My father in law is a senior partner in a national accountancy firm. He refers to it is as the Jimmy Carr disclosure.
    - UVB-76 12y ago
      I did not say Jimmy Carr admitted criminal wrongdoing. I am well aware of the distinction between tax avoidance and tax evasion, but in many jurisdictions (including the UK) there is legislation that also renders tax avoidance schemes illegal if the arrangements are sufficiently artificial or abusive. Since the Carr affair, HMRC have implemented the General Anti-Abuse Rule (GAAR). Although it has not, to my knowledge, been tested at a tax tribunal, I am fairly confident the arrangement Carr entered into would be deemed abusive under this new legislation.
      - ZenPro 12y ago
        Previous comment used the term legally guilty. You then referenced Jimmy Carr as an example and used the words guilty inferring legal and moral guilt. He was guilty of neither but he had a public persona to protect and admit wrongdoing where none existed. If subsequent legislation attempts to limit TAS with the "fair admittance" rule of checking the box it has no retrospective bearing on the conduct of Jimmy Carr.
  - bananas 12y ago
    Avoiding tax is not illegal. Most business do this even by paying dividends versus salary for example. Evading tax is. He was avoiding tax.
    - james1071 12y ago
      What is your point about Jimmy Carr? He stopped using an avoidance scheme once it was reported in the media-noting to do with the HMRC.
    - swombat 12y ago
      It's more complicated than that. He was using a so-called "Registered Tax-Avoidance Scheme" (TAS for short). TAS's are basically entire schemes built around a loophole in the tax law. Each time the government announces a new Budget, they include a raft of measures to try and plug these holes, but there are companies that specialise in finding these loopholes and helping their clients exploit them (for a fairly sizeable fee). They pay some top lawyers to provide a quote that "yes, damnit, the loophole exists", and then they go on their merry dance to acquire clients to make use of those loopholes. As my accountant explained it to me at the time (before I decided to stay the hell away from those things), the difference between regular tax avoidance and registered tax avoidance schemes is that in the first case, you and your accountant think you're paying a fair amount (and HMRC may disagree), whilst in the second case, you, your accountant, and HMRC all know you're playing dirty. Example: one of the more popular TAS's was to set up an employee benefits trust, with you (the business owner) as the beneficiary. Payments to the trust could be seen as staffing costs, thereby attracting no Corporation Tax on profit. The trust would then loan you the money at zero interest and with no expectation of it ever being repaid, thereby avoiding income tax. Bingo - zero tax! But obviously exploiting a hole in the rules. This has been progressively clamped down on - first by requiring people using TAS's to declare that they are using them (which allows HMRC to target them more effectively), and in the latest Budget, by requiring users of TAS's to pay the tax first as if they weren't using the TAS and then argue with HMRC over whether the TAS is valid. I think overall the TAS thing is on the way out... but it's really worth drawing the line between regular tax avoidance (i.e. reducing your tax using very legit mechanisms like capital allowances, R&D tax credits, dividends/salary splits, etc) vs registered tax avoidance schemes, which are just dirty business. As far as I know, Jimmy Carr was using a registered tax avoidance scheme.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
In Norway, tax returns are public. It's a good system.
- klausjensen 12y ago
  I feel it is a violation of my privacy. It is a disgusting system.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
    I like it. It means people know how much others are earning. Wealth should be transparent.
    - k-mcgrady 12y ago
      >> "I like it. It means people know how much others are earning." That might seem fine if you are earning a decent salary but if you are working a shitty job to make ends meet it can be embarrassing. It's the main reason people find it rude to discuss each others salaries.
      - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
        That's the whole point. It means people are more acutely aware of the inequality of income in society.
      - judk 12y ago
        People are trained to find itnrue so that high earners don't feel uncomfortable being at the top of inequality.
antocv 12y ago
Swedish tax records are public, but difficult to access, I think its a great system, if youre really curious you can go or call tax office and ask for anybodies tax numbers thus know how much they earn. Its part of a transparent and open society. But there is no webservice somewhere where people can look on a map or search easily and so on. If you take it to next level you can buy a book containing all names addreses and taxable income and capital for an area. good system because its public like the records and not private.

bananas 12y ago

Here we go again. Probably some greedy fuck of a civil servant (probably one of Cameron's ex-Eton buddies or friendly conservative slime like Guake) working out how to sell out our infrastructure to industry and make a larger bonus this year whilst doing fuck all. Hopefully the last non-political unit (the ICO) will stamp on this quickly.

davedx 12y ago

Conservative public sector policy is thoughtless Thatcherism: "Sell all the things!" (Forgive the meme)

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
Well, they're already selling medical records to private firms in England. Since they got away with that, they probably just want to sell as much other data as possible. EDIT: England, not England and Wales.
- DanBC 12y ago
  No they aren't. There's a point where hyperbole becomes sensationalising, and where sensationalising becomes deceptive.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - michaelt 12y ago
    The medical records of every NHS hospital patient in the country have been sold for insurance purposes, The Telegraph can reveal. [...] a report by a major society of actuaries discloses that it was able to obtain 13 years of hospital data [...] covering all hospital in-patient stays between 1997 and 2010 to track the medical histories of patients, identified by date of birth and postcode. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10656893/Hospital-records-of-all-NHS-patients-sold-to-insurers.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10656893/Hospit... And the best part? It only cost £2,200.
    - notahacker 12y ago
      The actual report is here. http://www.sias.org.uk/data/papers/SIASDec2013Paper/DownloadPDF http://www.sias.org.uk/data/papers/SIASDec2013Paper/Download... It's reasonably obvious that inferences can be made from this that will affect private sector insurance premiums, but highly unlikely that anything they've done with the data could be linked to specific individuals, even though the original anonymisation was unlikely to have been sufficient In the interests of balance, it's worth pointing out the non-profit organization linked to the insurance sector in question specifically denies some of the claims made in the Telegraph article: http://www.actuaries.org.uk/news/press-releases/articles/telegraph-article-rebuttal http://www.actuaries.org.uk/news/press-releases/articles/tel...

DrJokepu 12y ago

No offence to HMRC staff but I'm not sure if I really trust the Civil Service to decide what "generates clear public benefits" and if there are "robust safeguards in place"!

jasiek 12y ago
Given what happened with the NHS data, neither do I.

shocks 12y ago

Off topic: Did anyone else notice that the bbc.co.uk website is asking for a certificate for identification?

askew 12y ago
Yes - I keep getting this. It's rather peculiar.
Joeboy 12y ago
Yep. I clicked cancel and decided not to worry about it for now. I'm interested to know what it's about though.

swombat 12y ago

Looks like the uk government has found an entirely novel angle on the concept of "transparency"! Between that and the NHS data and their reaction to Snowden, the meaning of transparency in the uk is clearly "we'll release all your private individual data while keeping secret everything that we do"!

UVB-76 12y ago

I'd rather an all or nothing approach to these kind of information sharing arrangements. If information is to be shared, it should be made freely available to all, not just to corporations that are able to shell out large sums for it.

7952 12y ago
I regularly buy data from government departments and it is extremely difficult. They are not commercially minded and regularly undercharge. You have to chase them for weeks to get anything done and the billing arrangements are complicated. In my experience UK government is terrible at selling anything. An API for tax data would have lots of possible applications, as a way of checking income for example. But it is doubtful that the government would ever have the skills to pull it off. They should either sell the data through a competent third party or make it open.
- swombat 12y ago
  Not true - there is one team in Government that could do this: the gov.uk team. http://gov.uk http://gov.uk is hands down the best government site I've ever seen. I'd trust those guys to be able to deliver it.
  - jasiek 12y ago
    I takes a lot more than a team of dedicated people to bring something in government into completion. First - there has to be a political consensus within the department to make things happen, then a business case needs to be written and approved. A budget needs to be assigned (where to get the money is another problem), and it needs to be decided that it will be built in-house. Only then, you can actually start building things - the process above takes anywhere from 6 months to a year, sometimes more.
    - swombat 12y ago
      I never said that was all it took (you seem to be replying to a straw man), but it is a necessary element.

0161 12y ago

This story broke last night on the Guardian website: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/18/hmrc-to-sell-taxpayers-data http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/18/hmrc-to-sell... Although it's not clear that it has come from an official HMRC statement (I couldn't find anything on its website), the timing of this -- the Friday evening / Saturday morning of the Easter bank holiday weekend -- feels like someone finding a good time to bury controversial news.

shubb 12y ago

It would be nice if UK.gov could make the public financial data of firms available in an open way. You can buy a firms financials from the government for £1 a company, or buy a full dataset for several thousand pounds. For little people wanting to do statistical analysis, that is unaffordable. An awesome startup here, duedil, somehow got the rights to the data, and makes it available for viewing through a lovely website. But giving some company monopoly on public data is really messed up. Good on duedil, but the government is really failing by putting them in that position.

UVB-76 12y ago
I don't think there's anything special about what DueDil are doing. Basic company information is public domain, and available to download in bulk [1] or via URI [2] Companies House also offer a free app for iOS and Android [3] providing some additional info, e.g. details of directors and filing histories. If you delve into it, that is all served by a JSON API. Accounts data has recently been opened up for free [4], providing info on about 60% of companies (all those that file accounts electronically, from what I gather) but the data is in (i)XBRL format, and I don't know how amenable it is to statistical analysis. Documents are my biggest pain at the moment. I believe annual returns, etc. should be public domain, and I think it is wrong that Companies House have the authority to charge for access to them. [1] http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_output.html http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_output.html [2] http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/miscellaneous/URI.shtml http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/miscellaneous/URI.sht... [3] http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/mobile-app/ http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/mobile-app/ [4] http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_accountsdata.html http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_accountsdata.html
- shubb 12y ago
  Thank's for the links. It was the annual returns that I was talking about. I was concerned that they might have sold the documents to Duedil cheap in a bulk deal that the public didn't have access to. However, looking into how Duedil got its dataset, it appears they buy the digitised data from Experian and friends, who get it from who knows where.

michaelt 12y ago

If you think this stuff is worth signing an online petition over: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/dont-sell-our-tax-data https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/dont-sell-our-tax-...