The compliance and enforcement programme : HM Revenue & Customs

The Compliance and Enforcement Programme , a major HMRC programme to improve the way it tackles evasion, delivered GBP4.32 billion of additional tax yield between 2006 and 2011.

It also forecasts that it will generate an additional GBP8.87 billion of yield between 2011-12 and 2014-15.

It also reduced staff numbers and introduced a range of improvements in its compliance work.

The Department has introduced new capabilities, notably the use of IT to identify incidences of evasion more effectively, although it is not yet exploiting the full potential of the new systems.

It also had to defer and reduce the scope of projects to keep within annual budgetary limits, leading to reductions in benefits.

The Compliance and Enforcement Programme cost GBP387 million to 2011-12 and was made up of over 40 projects.

It aimed to increase compliance yield - the measure of additional tax arising from compliance work - by GBP4.56 billion between 2006-2011.

However, HMRC will not achieve all of the Programme's forecast benefits because of changes to scope or slippage in delivering projects, as well as over-optimism in its forecasts. HMRC did not routinely measure the impact of the Programme on customer experience and it could achieve better value for money from its investment in compliance work by improved understanding of the impact of individual projects and ensuring that its staff have the capacity to exploit new systems to the full