The Law Commission has published a new paper that highlights how Public bodies, like the HMRC, have become unaccountable to the public they serve, according to the Law Commission’s latest report, which has received an enthusiastic welcome by the Professional Contractors Group (PCG).
Hailing the report as a blow to HMRC’s cavalier treatment of contractors, a forthright PCG statement says, “For too long HMRC has been free to trample all over the businesses of innocent and law-abiding taxpayers: we are hopeful that this exercise will finally allow them to obtain proper redress for the harm HMRC inflicts.”
Should the report’s proposals be adopted, contractors could in future have more opportunities to protect themselves against HMRC inspectors deemed to be acting ‘aggressively’.
Compensation mechanism
In theory, contractors and other private individuals already have redress against public bodies, but key proposals in the Law Commission’s report advocate introducing a damages mechanism that would turn the theory into reality.
John Brazier, managing director of the PGC, welcomes the Law Commission’s findings: “PCG will be pushing hard to ensure that this process ends with an effective mechanism for holding HMRC and other public bodies to account, so that innocent citizens can be properly compensated for any harm that is done to them by incompetent or aggressive action.”
But despite the report’s findings, nothing is going to change in the short term, and HMRC is going to continue to investigate, as it sees fit, contractors who show up on its radar.