Committee publication · Correspondence · 15 January 2025

Letter from Sir Jim Harra, Permanent Secretary, HMRC, following oral evidence, dated 18 December 2024

Summary

Sir Jim Harra, HMRC's Permanent Secretary, provides follow-up information to the Treasury Committee following oral evidence on 27 November 2024. He addresses seven specific questions about agricultural relief inquiries, CGT rollover relief costs, tax debt recovery progress, HMRC app usage, TikTok advertising, and system modernisation plans. He also corrects several factual errors from his oral testimony.

Key findings

HMRC received fewer than 10 queries about agricultural relief via its helpline since 30 October 2024; the department does not hold data on farms bought by international corporations.
In 2023-24, HMRC opened 193 inheritance tax inquiries where Agricultural Property Relief was the lead risk, raising £4.4m from settled enquiries in that category.
The most recent published cost of CGT Business Asset Rollover Relief (tax year 2017-18) was £65 million.
HMRC is on track to deliver £275m additional tax revenue for 2024-25 through debt collection measures; 1,200 staff are retained and 170 collectors due to leave in February 2025 will stay to support this.
Over 4.5 million customers used the HMRC app 79.9 million times in 2024-25; HMRC does not advertise on TikTok and has no official account there, in line with Government Communication Service policy.

Tone

Procedural

Topics

tax-administrationinheritance-taxcapital-gains-taxdebt-collectiondigital-services

Key actors

Sir Jim Harra, Dame Meg Hillier, HMRC, Treasury Select Committee, Justin Holliday

Notable line

“HMRC does not currently hold this data.”

Key Quotes

“HMRC does not currently hold this data.”
— Sir Jim Harra · on the number of farms bought by international corporations

“In 2023-24 we opened enquiries into 3,028 IHT claims, of these 193 were claims where the lead risk was related to Agricultural Property Relief”
— Sir Jim Harra · on inheritance tax inquiries into agricultural relief use

“We are confident that we will achieve the target of £275m additional tax revenue for 2024-”
— Sir Jim Harra · on progress of debt collection investment measures

“So far in 2024-25 over 4.5 million customers have used the HMRC App 79.9 million times.”
— Sir Jim Harra · on HMRC app usage statistics

“HMRC does not currently advertise or have an official account on TikTok, in line with Government Communication Service (GCS) policy.”
— Sir Jim Harra · on HMRC's social media presence

“… intention to make a profit is not a requirement for the taxation of farming trades.”
— Sir Jim Harra · clarification of earlier oral evidence response

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Source · parliament.uk record ↗