Now the Tories want to sell your tax details to private firms

This government behaves less like a serious political administration, and far more like a bunch of corporate spivs stripping the assets and looting the country for what they can get. Personal information held by the government, such as tax and medical records, should remain personal and definitely not for sale to private, for-profit companies. The economic dangers from credit agencies and similar companies are the most obvious, but there are others, such as blackmail attempts by unscrupulous individuals or organisations. This attempt to sale private tax details to those credit ratings the government wishes to contract out part of the work of the Inland Revenue should be stopped. Now.

Mike Sivier's blog

[Image: The Guardian.] Not happy with its attempt to sell your health details to private companies, the moneygrubbing Conservative-led Coalition wants to sell off your personal tax data to companies, researchers and public bodies.

The government is considering how much to charge for the information, and claims that all data accessed by third parties will be “confidential”.

But the public has already been stung once by the Coalition’s incompetent attempts to go commercial. The proposed initiative to share NHS medical records with the private sector had to be suspended after a public outcry over “pseudonymised” data – a process by which medical records were said to be anonymous but it was in fact possible to trace exactly whose they were.

The plans for HM Revenue and Customs to share its data are, apparently, being overseen by Treasury minister David Gauke, whose relaxed attitude towards private firms led him to sign…

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