In line with last year, small businesses were the worst category of tax avoiders and non-payers in 2022-23, accounting for 60% of the tax gap at £23.8bn, up from 59% in 2021-22. This is an area where HMRC appears to be failing to clamp down on high levels of non compliance, probably due to the huge number of small businesses and the sheer complexity of the tax system, not helped by HMRC's deteriorating service standards and limited support for small business customers.

What is of great concern is that the failure to pay taxes by small businesses is getting worse, up from 44% of the tax gap in 2018-19 to the current 60%, the highest figure ever reported.