The UK's tax body is reviewing its decisions to strip child benefit from about 23,500 claimants after it used travel data to conclude they had left the country permanently. Normally the benefit runs out after eight weeks living outside the UK, but many people affected complained that HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) had stopped their money after they went on holiday for just a short time. The move came after MPs on the Treasury Select Committee demanded answers from the tax authority. HMRC has apologised for any errors and says anyone who thinks their benefits have been stopped incorrectly should contact them. In September, the government began a crackdown on child benefit fraud which it believes could save £350m over five years.

HMRC has confirmed it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor social media posts as part of criminal investigations into suspected tax cheats. It said the tech would not replace "human decision-making" and was subject to legal oversight. "Greater use of AI will enable our staff to spend less time on admin and more time helping taxpayers, as well as better target fraud and evasion to bring in more money for public services," it said in a statement. However, experts warn there are risks with using AI in this way.

The announcement comes as part of a series of measures the government says will improve HMRC services and make the authority "quicker, fairer and more modern". Mr Murray announced the plans in a speech to tax professionals on Tuesday. "We are going further and faster to overhaul the way HMRC works," he said. That included simplifying systems, such as the declaration of income from so-called side-hustles for tax purposes. It also meant learning from the private sector to make customer service more efficient. A report by the Public Accounts Committee of MPs in January included figures that showed the failings of HMRC's phone line.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which starts today in Las Vegas, is an odd beast. It is the biggest technology event of the year, a sprawling conference that spills over multiple casinos and convention centres to dominate a city that is hard to overshadow. But for the better part of a decade it has been an afterthought for some of the world's biggest businesses, led by Apple realising that if you can get the press to come to you, you don't need to risk burying your product launches under hundreds of competing newslines. The result is that CES is no longer where you see the future, but where you learn how that future will get copied into a thousand cheap plastic knockoffs. There are, of course, exceptions.

MyT is an innovative subscription-based service designed for small businesses to support their need to submit financial information to HMRC under the Making Tax Digital initiative, which is mandatory from April 2023. Making Tax Digital is for individuals and businesses to get their tax right and keep on top of their affairs. MyT provides a simple way to keep track of business finances on the go, send and manage invoices and bills, record expenses and mileage. MyT is the perfect solution for companies with limited time and budget. Easy to use and quick to set up, MyT works on a range of devices and allows businesses and accountants to harness the power of AI without any technical experience.

As the technology evolution has progressed, have we all lost our jobs?

In each case, the charity looked at automation as something which was coming down the line, but wouldn't be relevant for a few more years at least. Hardly anyone was embarking on an automation projects that was transforming their day-to-day work processes. For one school of thought, this comparative lack of activity in what remains quite a cash-strapped sector isn't hugely surprising, but on the flip side the potential of Robotic Process Automation is huge in unlocking time, resource and funding for a wide range of charities and not-for-profits. Charity is not the only sector where there is a lack of digital maturity, but in increasingly testing times for not-for-profits, it's important to consider some of the key ways in which automation can empower them to deliver a truly modern service. Unfortunately, many Not-for-Profits don't have the ability to easily integrate platforms like Just Giving and Virgin Money with their internal systems, even though such platforms play a large role in making charitable giving something easily accessible to the public – giving with just a couple of clicks.

HM Revenue & Customs' decision to utilise more artificial intelligence in its quest to gather evidence for tax evasion investigations has led to a decline in the number of raids at business premises across the UK. The number of raids fell overall by 30% within 12 months. HMRC officers raided 471 commercial properties in the 12 months to April 2018, compared with 669 in the previous year, according to figures obtained in a recent Freedom of Information request. In March, HMRC's Acting Digital Transformation Director, Brigid McBride, confirmed that the tax authority was keen to use AI to improve departmental efficiencies and ease the complexity of tax investigations. HMRC has set its department a goal of automating ten million processes by the end of 2018.

HMRC's use of AI and big data to gather evidence in tax investigations has led to a 30% drop in property raids, according to law firm Pinsent Masons. The firm explained that HMRC has leveraged sophisticated algorithms and big data sources to gather evidence with greater ease and efficiency than costly and time-consuming property raids. Steven Porter, Partner at Pinsent Masons, said: "HMRC's big brother-style data collection on taxpayers is giving it the material it needs to ramp up its tax investigations and at the same time, is reducing the need for it to actually raid properties." The figure has dropped from 669 property raids in 2016/17 to 471 last year. In particular, tax inspectors have been using the state-of-the-art Connect database, an analytical system worth £80m and designed by BAE Systems, to carry out preliminary investigative work within seconds.

Terrorism, immigration and Brexit dominates today's headlines. The question of how to police Britain's borders is both politically charged and a matter of day-to-day concern for the Home Office, the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and related departments. International cargo and traveller volumes are growing at an unprecedented rate. At the same time, international air freight is also experiencing annual double-digit growth. While most of this traffic is legitimate and not a threat to public safety or state, border protection agencies and officers are under pressure to make accurate risk assessment judgements.