Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what proportion of HM Revenue and Customs budget is allocated to investigate landfill tax fraud.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) takes a risk-based approach to tackling all non-compliance, including those relating to Landfill Tax fraud. This means that it does not routinely allocate compliance budgets for individual taxes, but instead responds flexibly with civil and criminal investigations based upon the risks involved.

For Landfill Tax, over the past five years HMRC has issued 51 Landfill Tax assessments totalling £94.3m, including 37 civil penalties totalling £2.2m. In addition, since April 2015, HMRC has commenced 78 compliance interventions targeting landfill site operators, and in the last 12 months visited 28 landfill sites.

This work has also been supported by the waste sector taskforce, which has targeted businesses across the supply chain. In 2015-16, the taskforce investigated 250 business, with a further 179 businesses targeted in 2016-17 to date.

HMRC also undertakes criminal investigations, and in September 2015 14 people were arrested as a result of a multi-agency operation into Landfill Tax fraud. This investigation is ongoing. To avoid jeopardising any investigations and/or sources of intelligence, HMRC does not disclose specific regional details.

In October 2016, in its ‘Measuring Tax Gaps’ 2016 publication, HMRC estimated the Landfill Tax gap to be £150 million in 2014-15.

HMRC does not hold readily accessible information concerning the number of complaints received for non-payment of Landfill Tax.