Personal Savings: Interest Rates
The question
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment she has made of the potential impact on taxpayers of discrepancies between savings interest data reported to HM Revenue and Customs by financial institutions and the information provided by those institutions directly to account holders; and what steps HM Revenue and Customs is taking to ensure that taxpayers acting in good faith are not penalised where such discrepancies arise.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson
HMRC works closely with financial institutions and their representative body, UK Finance, to make the best possible use of the savings interest data they provide and correctly assess the impact of those savings on the account holders’ overall tax position.
HMRC are not aware of any discrepancy between the data institutions provide to HMRC and that provided to their customers. However, there are some challenges in matching data between financial institutions and HMRC systems, which can result in a small number of mismatches.
Operational data suggests that data matching rates have improved, rising from around 70% to around 85%. Working with the institutions and their representative bodies, HMRC expect this to increase further this year, with additional improvements to also come in subsequent years.
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