
HMRC 'plans to share tax data with private firms' - rb2e
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27086401
======
swombat
Looks like the uk government has found an entirely novel angle on the concept
of "transparency"!

Between that and the NHS data and their reaction to Snowden, the meaning of
transparency in the uk is clearly "we'll release all your private individual
data while keeping secret everything that we do"!

------
DrJokepu
No offence to HMRC staff but I'm not sure if I really trust the Civil Service
to decide what "generates clear public benefits" and if there are "robust
safeguards in place"!

~~~
jasiek
Given what happened with the NHS data, neither do I.

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UVB-76
I'd rather an all or nothing approach to these kind of information sharing
arrangements.

If information is to be shared, it should be made freely available to all, not
just to corporations that are able to shell out large sums for it.

~~~
7952
I regularly buy data from government departments and it is extremely
difficult. They are not commercially minded and regularly undercharge. You
have to chase them for weeks to get anything done and the billing arrangements
are complicated. In my experience UK government is terrible at selling
anything.

An API for tax data would have lots of possible applications, as a way of
checking income for example. But it is doubtful that the government would ever
have the skills to pull it off. They should either sell the data through a
competent third party or make it open.

~~~
swombat
Not true - there is one team in Government that could do this: the gov.uk
team. [http://gov.uk](http://gov.uk) is hands down the best government site
I've ever seen. I'd trust those guys to be able to deliver it.

~~~
jasiek
I takes a lot more than a team of dedicated people to bring something in
government into completion. First - there has to be a political consensus
within the department to make things happen, then a business case needs to be
written and approved. A budget needs to be assigned (where to get the money is
another problem), and it needs to be decided that it will be built in-house.
Only then, you can actually start building things - the process above takes
anywhere from 6 months to a year, sometimes more.

~~~
swombat
I never said that was all it took (you seem to be replying to a straw man),
but it is a necessary element.

------
0161
This story broke last night on the Guardian website:

[http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/18/hmrc-to-
sell...](http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/18/hmrc-to-sell-
taxpayers-data)

Although it's not clear that it has come from an official HMRC statement (I
couldn't find anything on its website), the timing of this -- the Friday
evening / Saturday morning of the Easter bank holiday weekend -- feels like
someone finding a good time to bury controversial news.

------
davedx
Conservative public sector policy is thoughtless Thatcherism: "Sell all the
things!" (Forgive the meme)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Well, they're already selling medical records to private firms in England.
Since they got away with that, they probably just want to sell as much other
data as possible.

EDIT: England, not England and Wales.

~~~
DanBC
No they aren't.

There's a point where hyperbole becomes sensationalising, and where
sensationalising becomes deceptive.

~~~
michaelt

      The medical records of every NHS hospital 
      patient in the country have been sold for 
      insurance purposes, The Telegraph can reveal.
      [...]
      a report by a major society of actuaries 
      discloses that it was able to obtain 13 
      years of hospital data [...] covering all 
      hospital in-patient stays between 1997 and 
      2010 to track the medical histories of 
      patients, identified by date of birth and 
      postcode. 
    

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10656893/Hospit...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10656893/Hospital-
records-of-all-NHS-patients-sold-to-insurers.html)

And the best part? It only cost £2,200.

~~~
notahacker
The actual report is here.
[http://www.sias.org.uk/data/papers/SIASDec2013Paper/Download...](http://www.sias.org.uk/data/papers/SIASDec2013Paper/DownloadPDF)
It's reasonably obvious that inferences can be made from this that will affect
private sector insurance premiums, but highly unlikely that anything they've
done with the data could be linked to specific individuals, even though the
original anonymisation was unlikely to have been sufficient

In the interests of balance, it's worth pointing out the non-profit
organization linked to the insurance sector in question specifically denies
some of the claims made in the Telegraph article:
[http://www.actuaries.org.uk/news/press-
releases/articles/tel...](http://www.actuaries.org.uk/news/press-
releases/articles/telegraph-article-rebuttal)

~~~
vertex-four
> highly unlikely that anything they've done with the data could be linked to
> specific individuals, even though the original anonymisation was unlikely to
> have been sufficient

So even if we take a professional body which represents the interests of the
insurance industry at their word, we still have to trust that private
companies with little or no public oversight will somehow decide to do the
right thing?

It's blatantly obvious that a postcode and age is enough to match a record to
an individual. Why are we expected to trust private industry not to mess with
our privacy?

~~~
notahacker
We have no more _but also no less_ reason to trust individuals who are not NHS
employees from breaching data protection law than individuals who are NHS
employees, and have access to much more sensitive data.

On a pedantic note, the data was split by postcode _district_ and age, with
the average postcode _district_ being 20,000 people. I still agree that's not
data you'd want on a private insurers' database because they could de-
anonymise outliers like the only 97 year old man, and others with partial
knowledge of their hospital visit history, but it would be a lot of work
making it usable for granting or denying insurance to particular individuals.
Especially when it's probably easier to gain illicit access to the non-
anonymised records than gain and make sense of illicit access to the
anonymised records.

~~~
vertex-four
As it stands, we have the NHS having access to our personal data. What the
Government wants to do is expand the number of organisations that have access
to that data to include private companies that we have no oversight over. At
least if the NHS has shit policy, we can complain and have our complaints
heard. If a private company that has nothing to do with you has shit policy?
Tough luck.

Additionally, there's many things that an organisation can do with data that
are not in breach of data protection law,, but which I do not want them doing
anyway, especially without me explicitly opting in to giving them that data.
Data protection law mostly just says that they can't share it with other
companies without your permission, they must let you know what it is if you
ask, and you have the right to have it corrected if it's wrong. And even then,
there's plenty enough companies in the UK that don't even meet those rules all
the time!

This is not about individuals. This is about organisations.

------
bananas
Here we go again.

Probably some greedy fuck of a civil servant (probably one of Cameron's ex-
Eton buddies or friendly conservative slime like Guake) working out how to
sell out our infrastructure to industry and make a larger bonus this year
whilst doing fuck all.

Hopefully the last non-political unit (the ICO) will stamp on this quickly.

------
shubb
It would be nice if UK.gov could make the public financial data of firms
available in an open way.

You can buy a firms financials from the government for £1 a company, or buy a
full dataset for several thousand pounds. For little people wanting to do
statistical analysis, that is unaffordable.

An awesome startup here, duedil, somehow got the rights to the data, and makes
it available for viewing through a lovely website. But giving some company
monopoly on public data is really messed up. Good on duedil, but the
government is really failing by putting them in that position.

~~~
UVB-76
I don't think there's anything special about what DueDil are doing.

Basic company information is public domain, and available to download in bulk
[1] or via URI [2]

Companies House also offer a free app for iOS and Android [3] providing some
additional info, e.g. details of directors and filing histories. If you delve
into it, that is all served by a JSON API.

Accounts data has recently been opened up for free [4], providing info on
about 60% of companies (all those that file accounts electronically, from what
I gather) but the data is in (i)XBRL format, and I don't know how amenable it
is to statistical analysis.

Documents are my biggest pain at the moment. I believe annual returns, etc.
should be public domain, and I think it is wrong that Companies House have the
authority to charge for access to them.

[1]
[http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_output.html](http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_output.html)

[2]
[http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/miscellaneous/URI.sht...](http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/miscellaneous/URI.shtml)

[3] [http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/mobile-
app/](http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/mobile-app/)

[4]
[http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_accountsdata.html](http://download.companieshouse.gov.uk/en_accountsdata.html)

~~~
shubb
Thank's for the links. It was the annual returns that I was talking about. I
was concerned that they might have sold the documents to Duedil cheap in a
bulk deal that the public didn't have access to.

However, looking into how Duedil got its dataset, it appears they buy the
digitised data from Experian and friends, who get it from who knows where.

~~~
UVB-76
The source of all the data will be Companies House. You can get (presumably
unlimited) access to all annual returns for £17.5k pa [1]

I can't imagine the government make enormous sums of money through the sale of
such data, and I think there is a significant public interest in this kind of
company data being freely available.

[1]
[http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/toolsToHelp/ourPrices.shtml](http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/toolsToHelp/ourPrices.shtml)

------
SixSigma
Wouldn't it be better to allow unfettered access to tax data for everyone, on
everyone?

~~~
bananas
As someone who was under investigation a few years ago by the HMRC who thought
I was doing something naughty, which I wasn't, absolutely no flipping way.

Tax is one of the few areas in which you are morally and legally guilty until
proven innocent (asset freezes and Jimmy Carr for example).

~~~
UVB-76
How do you mean? To all intents and purposes Jimmy Carr was "guilty" of
participating in a tax avoidance scheme, and admitted wrongdoing.

~~~
ZenPro
In what way is avoiding tax through a legal vehicle guilty of a crime?

Do you volunteer extra tax when you don't have to?

Tax avoidance/tax efficiency is not tax evasion.

~~~
UVB-76
I did not say Jimmy Carr admitted criminal wrongdoing.

I am well aware of the distinction between tax avoidance and tax evasion, but
in many jurisdictions (including the UK) there is legislation that also
renders tax avoidance schemes illegal if the arrangements are sufficiently
artificial or abusive.

Since the Carr affair, HMRC have implemented the General Anti-Abuse Rule
(GAAR). Although it has not, to my knowledge, been tested at a tax tribunal, I
am fairly confident the arrangement Carr entered into would be deemed abusive
under this new legislation.

~~~
ZenPro
Previous comment used the term legally guilty.

You then referenced Jimmy Carr as an example and used the words guilty
inferring legal and moral guilt.

He was guilty of neither but he had a public persona to protect and admit
wrongdoing where none existed.

If subsequent legislation attempts to limit TAS with the "fair admittance"
rule of checking the box it has no retrospective bearing on the conduct of
Jimmy Carr.

------
shocks
Off topic: Did anyone else notice that the bbc.co.uk website is asking for a
certificate for identification?

~~~
Joeboy
Yep. I clicked cancel and decided not to worry about it for now. I'm
interested to know what it's about though.

------
michaelt
If you think this stuff is worth signing an online petition over:
[https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/dont-sell-our-
tax-...](https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/dont-sell-our-tax-data)

