§ Mr. PicklesTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what recent estimate his Department has made of the level of income tax contributions lost to evasion. [135382]
§ Dawn PrimaroloThere is no reliable measure of the total tax and other duties lost to evasion. In his report, published in March 2000, Lord Grabiner QC commented on the scale of the hidden economy and said
By its nature, the size of the informal economy is hard to measure. Most estimates are based on analysing high-level economic aggregates, such as labour market statistics or income and expenditure surveys, and calculate the result as a percentage of GDP. However there is research which suggests that these estimates tend to be exaggerated.It would be impractical to arrive at a precise and meaningful figure as to the scale of the problem without a considerable investment of time and resources.