Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he plans to take to ensure that data shared with the UK under the Common Reporting Standard are used to estimate the proportion of UK residents that had properly reported their overseas accounts.

The Common Reporting Standard (CRS) provides HMRC with critical information which is playing a major role in tackling offshore tax non-compliance.

When CRS data is received, HMRC systematically compare it to customer information and tax records, to establish whether UK taxpayers have properly reported their overseas income and determine the appropriate response.

The CRS data contains millions of records and is just one of many data sources which HMRC has access to. UK taxpayers are not generally required to report overseas accounts. Instead, they must report taxable income and gains, so HMRC cannot estimate the proportion of accounts properly reported. However, HMRC does plan to calculate and publish a new stand-alone estimate of the offshore tax not being correctly reported by individuals next year, an ‘offshore tax gap’, for the ‘Measuring tax gaps 2023 edition’.