Bill Dodwell, partner and head of tax policy at Deloitte, considers the implications of tax returns which are pre-populated with data by HMRC and asks whether taxpayers would check or understand the figures put in front of them
One of the promises made by Chancellor George Osborne in March 2015, when he announced HMRC’s digital transformation, was that taxpayers would no longer need to tell HMRC information the tax authority already possessed. The speech was billed as ‘the end of the tax return’.
Pre-population of data is an integral part of this vision. This means that HMRC would seek information from data providers and automatically add the details into a taxpayer’s records. Instead of filling in every number in a tax return, the taxpayer would be asked to check the data in the pre-filled return and make any necessary changes. She or he would not start with a blank screen; it would include data sent to HMRC by employers and pension providers through PAYE.
