Before anything can actually be assessed, there must be information that can form the basis of the assessment. This is true in tax as it is in any other walk of life. A further question arises in respect of the source of that information. Should it be purely from taxpayers? Or should tax authorities be entitled to look at information gathered from other sources also? It seems clear that in order to crosscheck taxpayer’s information, the latter will be necessary. But to effectuate this end, it will be necessary for the tax authority to be granted the requisite powers, and wherever this occurs, the issue of taxpayer protections necessarily arises. James Madison recognised this as long ago as 1788 when he wrote: “you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself”. For this reason additionally, the need for tax authorities themselves to act transparently towards taxpayers becomes obvious – it provides for control of the authority by providing clear evidence and means of investigation to concerned parties to either ensure that the authority is acting within its prescribed limits or to obtain remedies where the body fails to act within them.

Against this background, I have just uploaded on to SSRN a report I have prepared on tax transparency for the Annual Congress of the European Association of Tax Law Professors. The report is prepared in response to detailed questions and as a result it does not flow like an academic article pursuing a particular thesis.

The report itself deals with three primary aspects of tax transparency: what information HMRC may acquire and how it may be used, taxpayer protections, and the transparency of HMRC towards taxpayers and the public generally. It may be downloaded here.