HMRC Competition to Tackle Deliberate Evasion and Help Close the Tax Gap

Closing the tax gap is a key strategic priority for HMRC. In the 2023 to 2024 tax year, the tax gap is estimated to be 5.3% of total theoretical tax liabilities, or £46.8 billion in absolute terms. This is driven by a range of customer behaviours from simple error to deliberate evasion. Identifying deliberate evasion is inherently difficult across a very large population of customers. By its nature the intent of deliberate evasion is to hide and deceive. This can lead to sub-optimal targeting of investigations by HMRC which impacts HMRC’s ability to close the tax gap and increases the burden on compliant customers. Being able to identify deliberate evasion accurately at population level will improve HMRC’s approach to managing the tax gap and reduce the impact on compliant customers.

This competitive procurement will invite novel and innovative solutions to closing the tax gap within a customer group on the theme of tackling evasion behaviour. The competition is open to all registered businesses.

Potential solutions may include (but are not limited to) analytical techniques and data that can help identify indicators of potential evasion in HMRC’s risking processes. However, this is an open competition, and HMRC would like to explore a range of innovative solutions that can contribute to the primary objective of closing the tax gap.

A multi-stage competitive flexible procedure will be used with features designed to support innovation, encourage participation especially from Small and Medium sized Enterprises, and to enable HMRC to implement a solution to the problem statement.

The first round submission will comprise of a short proposal and mandatory exclusion criteria. Bidders selected to proceed to further rounds will receive funding to support them through the rounds of the competition. There will be a funded pilot phase as part of the competition. Bidders are encouraged to join the launch event on the 21st July to learn about the stages of the competition. A full detailed description will be included in the tender documentation and further funding updates will be added to this page once available.

A launch event introducing the problem statement and the detail of the competitive flexible procedure will be held virtually, via Microsoft Teams, on Monday 21^st July 2025 at 11am to 12:30pm. Bidders must register for HMRC’s SAP Ariba eSourcing portal (see below for details) and complete the registration form to register for the launch event by 3pm on Friday 18^th July.

Late requests to join the event may be considered up to 10am on Monday 21^st July.

The launch event will be recorded and the recording will be available to all bidders who enter the competition on SAP Ariba.

For queries about this competition, contact innovationaiteam@hmrc.gov.uk.