Tax authorities routinely hold back on using sanctions against multinational companies while pursuing small businesses and individuals, an influential committee of MPs claimed today.
HM Revenue and Customs has ‘lost its nerve’ in the pursuit of tax owed by corporate giants leading to an increase in the ‘tax gap’ - the amount owed to the Exchequer versus what is actually collected - of £1billion in the tax year 2011/12 to £35billion, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said today.
HMRC has also failed to collect much of the unpaid tax it hoped to extract from Swiss bank accounts - gathering just £440million so far this financial year, rather than the £3.12billion forecast after a bilateral agreement.

Lets not forget all the Govt contracts given to organisations and individuals who are non dom tax payers.

It sickens me the way they hound and fleece people at the bottom. A mate of mine is getting letters saying he owes them £1200 in fines for not sending back his tax return. He's never done a tax return and has enough trouble trying to find odd jobs on the minimum wage. He's barely surviving as it is without the worry of escalating fines for not doing something he doesn't understand.