The government has published its latest estimate of the UK Tax Gap, which measures the gap between the theoretical tax liabilities and actual collection of tax revenues.

One of the headline statistics shown in the summary is that the largest tax gap is contributed by the corporation tax from small businesses. The report does make it clear, though, that the figures are HMRC’s best estimates and each component of the tax gap comes with an uncertainty rating and revision.

For example, the corporation tax chapter clarifies that ‘in order to evaluate the uncertainty of the corporation tax gap, HMRC assigns an uncertainty rating for each tax gap component, ranging from “very low” to “very high”.’

It’s worth noting that the small businesses corporation tax gap has a ‘high’ uncertainty.

ACCA has called upon HMRC to provide more clarity and analysis of the reasons for the corporation tax gap from SMEs to enable our members to better identify any problem areas and assist those clients to stay compliant.