HMRC ‘plans to share tax data with private firms’

Taxpayers’ personal data could be shared with private firms under plans drawn up by Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

If given the go-ahead it would allow HMRC to release anonymous tax data to third parties including companies, researchers and public bodies.

An HMRC spokesman said "no final decisions" had been taken, and it was committed to "confidentiality".

Hold on, you can’t on the one hand say we are committed to confidentiality and on the other hand say we want to share millions of people’s data with private firms, it doesn’t add up.

Why can’t you control your own data and who sees it? When you disclose information to HMRC that doesn’t mean they own it and can all of a sudden decide to hand it out to whoever they like.

Worst of all this response from HMRC smacks of a last minute pr panic, which means they were hoping to do it without anyone finding out or were hoping by the time it was found out it would be too late.

I’m hoping now they’ve been caught trying to ‘share’ (cough cough sell cough cough) peoples information in secret, that this stupid idea won’t be given the go ahead and HMRC will hopefully realise they can’t do what they like with peoples personal information.