HMRC governance

HMRC has been under fire for a while now for all sorts of reasons some justified some perhaps not. The question I’d like to ask is whether the time has now come for there to be an independent oversight body for HMRC as many of the recent events seem to me to be pointing in that direction.

One of these events was the concern of the Public Accounts Committee that HMRC may have signed off on a tax enquiry settlement that was too lenient. But HMRC was particularly criticised for the fact that there was little if any independence between the people signing off the settlement and those negotiating it. As a direct result of that criticism HMRC announced new...