Beautiful Virgin Islands

Wednesday, Oct 08, 2025

HMRC denies misleading MPs over tax avoidance by its contractors

HMRC denies misleading MPs over tax avoidance by its contractors

Commons report claimed tax agency put its reputation ‘ahead of telling the truth’ about loan arrangement schemes
A group of MPs has accused HM Revenue & Customs of “misleading” a parliamentary committee, and possibly breaking the civil service code, by withholding “embarrassing” information about how it had engaged at least 15 contractors who used tax avoidance schemes while working for the tax agency.

In a report on Wednesday, the all-party group of MPs and peers claimed that HMRC had put the management of its reputation “ahead of telling the truth”.

HMRC rejected the claim, saying its leaders had not misled parliamentarians, and that it was possible for contractors to use such schemes without the participation or knowledge of the organisation that had hired them.

The row involves the “loan charge”, a government measure originally announced in 2016 that is designed to claw back unpaid taxes from people who, HMRC says, used so-called “disguised remuneration” tax avoidance schemes.

Under these often complex schemes, external contractors – ranging from IT workers to locum nurses – were paid using loans rather than salaries, thus sidestepping usual income tax and national insurance arrangements.

Rows about the issue have raged for years, with claims that many individuals have been unfairly landed with “life-changing” demands for repayment, even though they often believed they had little or no choice but to enter into these schemes.

HMRC’s position has long been that these arrangements “do not work” and that it has warned against the use of tax avoidance schemes for years.

The all-party parliamentary loan charge group is made up of MPs and peers who have “concerns” about this issue, and its secretariat is staffed and funded by the Loan Charge Action Group campaign. The parliamentary group has now published a letter and report on HMRC’s own use of contractors using disguised remuneration schemes, including arrangements subject to the loan charge.

The group said Freedom of Information requests had revealed that at least 15 contractors using disguised remuneration schemes had worked for HMRC and its wholly owned division Revenue and Customs Digital Technology Services (RCDTS) between 2016 and 2020, and that as recently as July 2020, HMRC and its subsidiary still had a contractor using one of these schemes.

The report stated: “It is clear there were indeed contractors working for HMRC, as well as government departments, using loan arrangements. The fact that HMRC has tried to evade questions on this matter is disgraceful and, we believe, a clear attempt to seek to cover up this embarrassing fact.”

It added: “The whole farce of the loan charge fiasco is surely demonstrated no more powerfully than by the fact that HMRC itself was using contractors engaged on what they now claim to be ‘aggressive’ and ‘defective’ tax avoidance arrangements. As well as not acting at the time to close these down, it also follows that HMRC was therefore also embroiled in such tax avoidance arrangements.”

HMRC had previously been asked several times, including by the House of Lords economic affairs committee in late 2018, if it had employed contractors making use of such arrangements, and the report claims the tax collection agency had refused to directly answer this question.

HMRC had instead, the report claims, “put management of their reputation and public relations ahead of telling the truth, including to the point of providing statements designed to give a misleading impression and withholding the truth when they discovered it. This is simply not acceptable for any governmental body and may … represent a breach of the civil service code”.

An HMRC spokesperson said: “HMRC senior leaders did not mislead members of the House of Lords, and we have never endorsed or participated in disguised remuneration tax avoidance schemes. It is possible for contractors to use disguised remuneration without the participation or knowledge of their engager. Whenever it is or has been discovered that a contractor providing services to HMRC or RCDTS is currently using a disguised remuneration scheme, we have acted and will act promptly to terminate the relevant engagements.”

The spokesperson added: “We continue to warn people about the risks of using tax avoidance schemes, and our advice remains the same – if something looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×