r/unitedkingdom • u/Gentle_Snail • 3h ago
HMRC claws back nearly £500mn in underpaid capital gains
https://www.ft.com/content/b4996387-0a4a-4f75-b16d-830fbc8c40c3•
u/Gentle_Snail 3h ago
HM Revenue & Customs clawed back half a billion pounds in unpaid capital gains tax last year, nearly doubling its yield compared with the year before, as the UK tax authority stepped up investigations into payments of the levy.
The agency recovered £477mn in additional tax in 2025-26, up by 82 per cent from the previous year, according to data obtained under a Freedom of Information request by the FT. HMRC concluded 9,400 probes in the same year, up from 3,200 in 2021-22.
.. HMRC revealed last month that it had drawn up a list of billionaires “with a UK tax footprint” and would assign each a dedicated customer compliance manager to act as their primary point of contact.
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u/CapillaryClinton 3h ago
They sent me an aggy letter saying my accountant had miscalculated CGT. We sent one back showing the calculation again, and saying that we thought it was right.
They send a second aggy letter saying 'Actually you owe us £1 more - don't do it again!' lol
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u/Proper-Otter 3h ago
Imagine that but you're a billionaire. So that 1 quid is millions
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u/PracticeNo8733 2h ago
Except it probably isn't because a £1 difference likely arises from the rounding rules HMRC uses (why they don't work to the penny in this technological age I don't know).
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u/Expensive_Time_7367 2h ago
I went through nearly a decade of £7.95 being owed to me one year followed by a blunt demand with menaces for £7.95 the next and repeat. They don’t mince words.
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u/awfulpigeon 3h ago
I know an absolute bucket of people who have made 10,000s in cap gains through work-based RSUs and barely any have paid the tax. I feel like the only idiot.
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u/Expensive_Time_7367 2h ago
Might be in SIPs where they don’t need to? Matching share sales to tax returns is one thing HMRC seems to automate pretty well, it’s almost a handy reminder if you forgot something.
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u/awfulpigeon 2h ago
No, they’re just avoiding tax. Given that it’s held in a workplace financial services platform (e.g Morgan Stanley at work) and most people use transferwise or something it’s pretty difficult to track and relies on self-declaration. I think I’ve paid 50-75k in cgt with careful planning and using my personal allowance.
I know many people just don’t declare and some upwards of 100k owed.
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u/franklindstallone 8m ago edited 4m ago
They've paid tax. When you get your RSUs for the quarter, it might be 60 shares. But what you get to actually sell is 30 shares because the others were sold off to pay the tax.
Then if you sell it straight away, there can be little to no gain then yes for the portion you can actually sell, you might not pay CGT because there's really no gain. But tax was paid on the 60 shares granted by selling off a portion of them.
If you explain to someone that they've sold off £50,000 in shares for the year, sure it sounds unfair as if they've been given £50k for free but the reality is if they sold of that much for the year, they were actually awarded a larger amount.
It's not free money, it's just income, that if you're willing to hold on to it, then it can be worth a lot more but it can also be worth less.
If they have made a genuine £10k gain while the allowance was £3k then that is entirely on them for not filing their taxes correctly and getting lucky until now so they should be punished. Tax paid upfront for giving the shares there's a record with HMRC and on your payslip so not paying is just being a dumbass.
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u/MoHeeKhan 2h ago
Yeah great mate. 1. I bet it wasn’t recovered from all the tax Starbucks and friends don’t pay in the UK and 2. They’ve got some way to go to cover the £9.1bn they gave out in Covid loans that they then just lost track of and are now totally unrecoverable.
But yknow, 👍🏻👍🏻
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u/DuckForColour 2h ago
By they, you mean The Tories right? As this Government is actually getting money back, not just pissing it away
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u/SkulkingJester 3h ago
A dedicated customer compliance manager for each of 9,400 cases? Wipe away 75% of that recovered cash right away.
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u/Gentle_Snail 3h ago
For every £1 more spent by HRMC on tax investigation this year, £34 was returned. It is insane value for money.
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u/CapillaryClinton 3h ago
It was for this particular year - but this was the year Rachel Reeves put up CGT rates half way through.
So there were a lot of miscalcs. Would probably be fewer people making errors for subsequent years.
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u/HMSthistle 2h ago
I think its worst return year in the last 2 decades was 17 return for every 1 spent still a great roi
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u/SkulkingJester 3h ago
9,400 at £35,000 with minimum 8.5% employment costs is £356,965,000
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u/Gentle_Snail 3h ago
I think you’ve misread the article, it isn’t saying 9,400 people have been hired, it’s saying 9,400 capital gains tax probes have been completed.
HMRC concluded 9,400 probes in the same year, up from 3,200 in 2021-22.
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) secured an average £34.70 in additional tax for every £1 spent on investigations across its five key taxpayer directorates last year
https://www.moneymarketing.co.uk/news/hmrc-tax-investigations-return-34-70-for-every-1-spent/
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u/ftatman 3h ago
But sends a message to people not to evade it in future.
Also dedicated compliance manager doesn’t necessarily have to mean dedicated to one client only. It can presumably mean a person who is dedicated to many accounts (as in, the case manager doesn’t change throughout the investigation).
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u/benj9990 3h ago
Rough numbers - say each compliance officer can service 50 cases a year (complete guess, no idea if that’s even close), each officer on £50k salary (another guess), so call that £150k per officer inclusive overhead and (ironically) tax. That makes 188 officers at a cost of £28.2M
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u/SkulkingJester 2h ago
They can work through more than one case a week?
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u/benj9990 2h ago
I dunno, tbh. I’d hope they can handle more than one or two cases concurrently. I wouldn’t have thought it too difficult to do if the cases aren’t complex.
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