What is the 'tax gap'?

The highly respected Tax Journal is conducting a survey of the views of the UK tax profession on the so called ‘tax gap’, which HMRC claim stands at £42bn and some independent commentators say is as big as £120bn.
‘They are both wrong’ says Cormac Marum, tax partner at Harwood Hutton Tax Advisory LLP. ‘Tax avoidance is not part of the ‘tax gap’. The ‘tax gap’ is the amount of money lost to the Exchequer from people not applying the tax rules, i.e. from tax evasion. Tax avoidance is applying the tax rules as they stand and therefore cannot form part of the ‘tax gap’. If the Government does not like how people are applying the tax rules as they stand, it is at liberty to change those tax rules by legislation. Launching a vendetta against people who apply the tax rules as they stand is wrong and it is intellectually dishonest of the Government to blur the distinction between tax evasion, which is criminal, and tax avoidance, which is no more than the sensible management of one’s tax affairs’.
‘If the Government think there is a ‘right amount of tax to pay’, it should legislate and introduce a minimum tax requirement’.