It is not sufficiently clear how much tax is paid, and how much tax is avoided by the very wealthy, which restricts HMRC’s ability to reassure the public that it administers the system fairly. Fairness is at the heart of HMRC’s charter. It is important for confidence and trust in HMRC, which has been decreasing in recent years, that the public know the wealthiest are paying their fair share. We welcome the new Permanent Secretary’s commitment to improving trust in the tax system, including examining opportunities to provide greater transparency regarding the 6 amount of tax wealthy taxpayers pay and the contributions of different segments within the wealthy population. HMRC also needs to improve its assessment of the amount of tax that the wealthy avoid paying. HMRC says that the wealthy and offshore tax gaps are particularly difficult to measure. Given these difficulties, and the deficiencies in HMRC’s information on wealth, we are concerned that HMRC is overly confident and optimistic in its estimate that the wealthy tax gap is only £1.9 billion. Its partial estimate of the offshore tax gap, of £0.3 billion, seems far too low, particularly when compared with UK residents holding £849 billion in offshore accounts in