HMRC 'plans to share tax data with private firms'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27086401

by rb2e • 12 years ago

60 49 12 years ago

bbc.co.uk

SixSigma• 12 years ago

Wouldn't it be better to allow unfettered access to tax data for everyone, on everyone?

bananas3• 12 years ago

As someone who was under investigation a few years ago by the HMRC who thought I was doing something naughty, which I wasn't, absolutely no flipping way.

Tax is one of the few areas in which you are morally and legally guilty until proven innocent (asset freezes and Jimmy Carr for example).

UVB-765• 12 years ago

How do you mean? To all intents and purposes Jimmy Carr was "guilty" of participating in a tax avoidance scheme, and admitted wrongdoing.

TazeTSchnitzel4• 12 years ago

In Norway, tax returns are public. It's a good system.

klausjensen• 12 years ago

I feel it is a violation of my privacy. It is a disgusting system.

antocv• 12 years ago

Swedish tax records are public, but difficult to access, I think its a great system, if youre really curious you can go or call tax office and ask for anybodies tax numbers thus know how much they earn.

Its part of a transparent and open society. But there is no webservice somewhere where people can look on a map or search easily and so on.

If you take it to next level you can buy a book containing all names addreses and taxable income and capital for an area.

good system because its public like the records and not private.

bananas3• 12 years ago

Here we go again.

Probably some greedy fuck of a civil servant (probably one of Cameron's ex-Eton buddies or friendly conservative slime like Guake) working out how to sell out our infrastructure to industry and make a larger bonus this year whilst doing fuck all.

Hopefully the last non-political unit (the ICO) will stamp on this quickly.

davedx• 12 years ago

Conservative public sector policy is thoughtless Thatcherism: "Sell all the things!" (Forgive the meme)

TazeTSchnitzel4• 12 years ago

Well, they're already selling medical records to private firms in England. Since they got away with that, they probably just want to sell as much other data as possible.

EDIT: England, not England and Wales.

DanBC2• 12 years ago

No they aren't.

There's a point where hyperbole becomes sensationalising, and where sensationalising becomes deceptive.

DrJokepu• 12 years ago

No offence to HMRC staff but I'm not sure if I really trust the Civil Service to decide what "generates clear public benefits" and if there are "robust safeguards in place"!

jasiek2• 12 years ago

Given what happened with the NHS data, neither do I.

shocks• 12 years ago

Off topic: Did anyone else notice that the bbc.co.uk website is asking for a certificate for identification?

askew• 12 years ago

Yes - I keep getting this. It's rather peculiar.

Joeboy• 12 years ago

Yep. I clicked cancel and decided not to worry about it for now. I'm interested to know what it's about though.

swombat4• 12 years ago

Looks like the uk government has found an entirely novel angle on the concept of "transparency"!

Between that and the NHS data and their reaction to Snowden, the meaning of transparency in the uk is clearly "we'll release all your private individual data while keeping secret everything that we do"!

UVB-765• 12 years ago

I'd rather an all or nothing approach to these kind of information sharing arrangements.

If information is to be shared, it should be made freely available to all, not just to corporations that are able to shell out large sums for it.

7952• 12 years ago

I regularly buy data from government departments and it is extremely difficult. They are not commercially minded and regularly undercharge. You have to chase them for weeks to get anything done and the billing arrangements are complicated. In my experience UK government is terrible at selling anything.

An API for tax data would have lots of possible applications, as a way of checking income for example. But it is doubtful that the government would ever have the skills to pull it off. They should either sell the data through a competent third party or make it open.

swombat4• 12 years ago

Not true - there is one team in Government that could do this: the gov.uk team. http://gov.uk is hands down the best government site I've ever seen. I'd trust those guys to be able to deliver it.

0161• 12 years ago

This story broke last night on the Guardian website:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/18/hmrc-to-sell...

Although it's not clear that it has come from an official HMRC statement (I couldn't find anything on its website), the timing of this -- the Friday evening / Saturday morning of the Easter bank holiday weekend -- feels like someone finding a good time to bury controversial news.

shubb2• 12 years ago

It would be nice if UK.gov could make the public financial data of firms available in an open way.

You can buy a firms financials from the government for £1 a company, or buy a full dataset for several thousand pounds. For little people wanting to do statistical analysis, that is unaffordable.

An awesome startup here, duedil, somehow got the rights to the data, and makes it available for viewing through a lovely website. But giving some company monopoly on public data is really messed up. Good on duedil, but the government is really failing by putting them in that position.

UVB-765• 12 years ago

I don't think there's anything special about what DueDil are doing.

Basic company information is public domain, and available to download in bulk [1] or via URI [2]

Companies House also offer a free app for iOS and Android [3] providing some additional info, e.g. details of directors and filing histories. If you delve into it, that is all served by a JSON API.

Accounts data has recently been opened up for free [4], providing info on about 60% of companies (all those that file accounts electronically, from what I gather) but the data is in (i)XBRL format, and I don't know how amenable it is to statistical analysis.

Documents are my biggest pain at the moment. I believe annual returns, etc. should be public domain, and I think it is wrong that Companies House have the authority to charge for access to them.

[1] http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_output.html

[2] http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/miscellaneous/URI.sht...

[3] http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/mobile-app/

[4] http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_accountsdata.html

shubb2• 12 years ago

Thank's for the links. It was the annual returns that I was talking about. I was concerned that they might have sold the documents to Duedil cheap in a bulk deal that the public didn't have access to.

However, looking into how Duedil got its dataset, it appears they buy the digitised data from Experian and friends, who get it from who knows where.

michaelt2• 12 years ago

If you think this stuff is worth signing an online petition over: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/dont-sell-our-tax-...

HMRC 'plans to share tax data with private firms'

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