Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, and Julian Richer, founder of the Richer Sounds hi-fi chain, said the public was losing out on up to £36bn a year in taxes owed by companies and individuals that were not being collected.
In a joint intervention before next week's budget - in which the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is expected to prioritise tax giveaways - they said HM Revenue and Customs lacked the funding to chase businesses and the super-rich for non-payment, avoidance and evasion.
They called on Hunt to raise HMRC's funding so it can increase the number of investigations and enforcement cases to close the tax gap, saying as much as £20bn was being lost to "serious transgressions".
"It's a national scandal," Richer told the Guardian, in a joint interview with Nowak at the TUC's Congress House headquarters in central London. "What really annoys us are these guys ripping off the state. So for me it's personal. I'm absolutely outraged by what's going on.
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