Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether her Department undertakes checks on whether holders of work visas are paying (a) Income Tax and (b) National Insurance.

HMRC have interpreted ‘checks’ in this instance as ‘compliance checks’ on taxpayers with tax and National Insurance owed in the UK.

HMRC takes a risk-based approach to compliance and focuses its resources where tax is most at risk of not being paid. This approach may result in compliance checks on holders of work visas.

Decisions on which taxpayers should be subject to a compliance check are based on HMRC’s understanding of compliance risk in the tax system, which is supported by data and intelligence sources including banking data and credit card sales, business databases, international exchanges of information and reported wrongdoing, as well as assessments of the tax gap, economic and social trends, operational insight and risk monitoring.