Chancellor accused of misleading Parliament

The Independent has this morning accused the Chancellor of misleading the House of Commons.

George Osborne told MPs in March that HM Revenue and Customs were "collecting twice as much [tax] as before through compliance" amid a clampdown on tax avoidance.

The article claims that Mr Osborne was referring to the amount of tax expected to be collected through increased compliance with tax laws during this Parliament, rather than money already in Treasury coffers.

It also asserts that the way in which HMRC reports the sums collected through its compliance scheme changed in 2010, meaning that George Osborne isn't comparing like with like. These figures now include estimates for the sums HMRC would receive if those caught avoiding tax were to pay up, known as  "revenue protected" figures.

Last year Treasury Minister David Gauke told the House of Commons that:

"The methodology for calculating additional revenue collected from compliance activity changed between 2010/11 and 2011/12, and so the figure of £13.9 billion [for the 2010/11 tax year] is not directly comparable to later years."

The 2012/13 HMRC annual report shows that these "revenue protected" sums are more than double the amount of cash actually collected through compliance work.

HMRC has disputed the Independent's allegations in a quote given to the paper, saying that "the methodology used by HMRC entirely bears out the Chancellor's statement." Given the confusion, we've asked the UK Statistics Authority to look into the issue.

Update 19/06/2015

The letter we sent to the Statistics Authority is available here, along with their response here. In its response the UKSA said that HMRC and the NAO had since made clear that "it would be inappropriate to compare compliance yield outturns measured from 2011-12 directly with those that went before" due to methodological changes. It concluded that "HMRC acknowledge that its briefing to Ministers was based on its assessment at the time, and that some of the public announcements made about performance improvements were therefore incorrect".