Revenue and Customs: Legal Costs

(asked on 7th July 2021) - View Source
Questioner
Philip Dunne Portrait
Philip Dunne
(Conservative - Ludlow)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much HMRC has spent in aggregate on legal costs defending claims from taxpayers which reached court in each of the last 10 available financial years.

Answered by
Jesse Norman Portrait
Jesse Norman
This question was answered on 15th July 2021

HMRC incur several different types of legal costs when defending claims in Tribunals and Courts, such as Counsel fees, Court costs and Expert Witness costs. The department’s financial records are not currently set up to differentiate between costs relating to defending claims in Courts or Tribunals and other legal spend.

However, HMRC can provide costs incurred on Counsel fees and Court fees in litigation teams over the last 10 years. Aside from their staff costs, these will cover the vast majority of external legal spend on litigation and related activities.

£000s

2010/11

2011/12

2012/13

2013/14

2014/15

2015/16

2016/17

2017/18

2018/19

2019/20

2020/21

Counsel fees

6,643

7,983

6,851

7,326

8,840

8,599

7,956

7,923

8,926

8,464

7,935

Court costs

90

109

128

130

90

121

175

127

148

155

134

Expert Witness costs*

1,030

1,107

*Data not available for years 2010/11 – 2018/19

The Tax Assurance Commissioner’s Report (part of HMRC’s Annual Report) contains details of the tax protected in litigation by HMRC. Over the last 5 years this has amounted to over £180 billion.

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