HMRC recovered £5.2 billion from wealthy individuals in 2023/24 for tax errors, offshore activity and non-compliance – more than double the £2.2bn collected in 2019/20. However, a new National Audit Office (NAO) report warns that HMRC’s current tax gap estimate among the wealthy underplays the true extent of non-compliance.
There are around 850,000 wealthy individuals in the UK – defined by HMRC as people earning over £200,000 annually or holding assets of more than £2 million in the past three years. They make up just 2% of the population but paid a combined £119bn in personal taxes, averaging £140,000 each.
Despite their complex affairs, only 73% are represented by a tax agent, leaving more than one in four without formal professional oversight. The NAO highlights this as a challenge for HMRC, which has limited direct engagement with many wealthy taxpayers.
HMRC assigns a personal compliance manager to the wealthiest 15,000 individuals to improve oversight. Its specialist wealth team – 910 staff – recovered £15 for every £1 spent on these staff last year, up from £12 five years ago. The team’s £56m salary bill represents just 16% of the total yield.
Most of the tax from this group came from income tax (£103bn), followed by capital gains tax (£9bn), inheritance tax (£4bn) and stamp duties (£3bn). Notably, they paid over half of all inheritance tax collected, which reached a record £7.49bn last year, despite only 4% of the population paying it.
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