PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Unpaid Taxes (17 April 2023)

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 22 March 2023 to Question 165453 on Unpaid Taxes, how many and what proportion of penalties issued by HM Revenue and Customs recorded on the National Penalty Processing System for inaccuracies within returns or documents amounted to £1,000,000 or above in each of the last five years.

Asked by:
James Murray (Labour)

The National Penalty Processing System (NPPS) is used by HMRC to record certain types of information, in particular penalties for:

• Inaccuracies within returns and documents
• Failure to Notify
• Deliberate Withholding of Information

NPPS is a standalone system for these purposes only. It is not used to record all penalties charged by HMRC across all of its compliance or wider activities.

We have interpreted your request as relating to the penalties charged for Inaccuracies within returns and documents only. The total penalties recorded on NPPS for inaccuracies within returns and document per penalty case in each of the relevant years are:

	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21	2021/22
Total	57,494	38,820	24,244	18,905	31,902

As stated above, the NPPS does not record all penalties charged by HMRC, and these figures should not be taken to represent a complete picture of HMRC compliance activity. Every year, HMRC collect and protect billions of pounds of tax revenue that would otherwise have been lost to the Exchequer through error, fraud, or other forms of non-compliance.

Answered by:
Victoria Atkins (Conservative)
25 April 2023