HMRC acknowledges that debts become harder to collect the longer you wait to collect them.16 We are concerned that HMRC does not have the level of staffing it needs to deal with its increased workload in a timely manner, and this will in turn mean more debt goes unpaid.17 In March 2020, HMRC’s debt management team had 3,975 FTE staff. This followed a series of staff reductions over a number of years; at March 2014, HMRC had 4,857 staff in its debt management team.18 While HMRC is confident that it maintained performance with this reduced level of resources, we think it is hard to justify reducing the number of staff when HMRC has estimated that for each additional pound it spent on 9 C&AG’s Report, para 2.22 10 Qq 16–18 11 Qq 31, 84, 118; C&AG’s Report, para 13 12 Q33 13 Qq 29–31; C&AG’s Report, para 2.31 14 Qq 30–31 15 C&AG’s Report, para 2.19 and 3.8 to 3.10; Written evidence submitted by Jim Harra, Chief Executive and First Permanent Secretary of HMRC, dated 28 January 2022 16 Qq 31 17 Qq 61, 85–91; C&AG’s Report, para 3.9, 3.10 18 C&AG’s Report, para 3.11 HMRC’s management of tax debt 11 increasing its debt management staff capacity, it would collect an additional £18 of debt.19 Furthermore, there are indications that performance may not have been maintained. The NAO reported that HMRC wrote off more tax debt as uncollectable in the years running up to the pandemic. In 2018–19 and 2019–20 combined, HMRC wrote-off or remitted around £9.2 billion in tax debt, compared with a total of £8.4 billion in the previous two years.20