Lords Finance Bill Sub-Committee to hear from Tax Tribunal and HMRC

These public evidence sessions will have remote participation by witnesses and Committee members. The session will be streamed live on Parliament TV.

The first session will begin at 4pm. Giving evidence will be:

• Upper Tribunal Judge Sinfield – Chamber President, First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber)
• George Turner – Executive Director, TaxWatch
• Malcolm Gammie QC – Tax Law Review Committee, Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The second session will begin at 5pm. Giving evidence will be:

• Mary Aiston – Director, Counter-Avoidance, Customer Compliance Group, HMRC
• Jamie Horton – Assistant Director, Hidden Economy, Customer Compliance Group, HMRC
• Paul Riley – Director of Tax Administration, HMRC
• John Shuker – Deputy Director, International Collaboration and Transparency, Customer Strategy and Tax Design, HMRC
• Angela Walker – Deputy Director, Promoters and Upstream Policy, Customer Compliance Group, HMRC.

The topics that will be covered include:

• How HMRC currently obtains tax tribunal approval before seeking third party information from financial institutions and how this could be speeded up.
• Effectiveness of proposed measures against promoters of disguised remuneration schemes.
• Rationale for HMRC’s proposals on uncertain tax treatments.
• Why taxi and private hire vehicle drivers and operators, and scrap metal dealers, have been singled out for the proposed tax checks.

More on this inquiry

On Wednesday 21 October 2020 the Committee took evidence from the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group (LITRG), Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), Association of Taxation Technicians (ATT), Building Societies Association, and UK Finance. You can watch this session back on Parliament TV.

The House of Lords Economic Affairs Finance Bill Sub-Committee’s inquiry is focussing on three areas of the draft Finance Bill 2020–21, all of which are related to the powers of HMRC:

• New proposals for tackling promoters and enablers of tax avoidance schemes;
• New tax checks on licence renewal applications; and
• Amendments to HMRC’s civil information powers.

This inquiry has its own web page.