It seems that remarkably few of the 400,000 or so people who it is known have received letters from banks and HM Revenue & Customs about their offshore bank accounts have decided to own up to unpaid tax.
I can only repeat what KPMG have to say on this:
It's difficult to fathom why so few people have so far come forward to register for the ODF. It may be that there is a 'herd' mentality operating here and people are under the impression that there is safety in numbers - if they hide in the crowd HMRC won't be able to get them - or they believe they are 'small fry' (even when quite large sums of money are involved) and, as such, HMRC won't be interested in them. Failing to step forward is a very dangerous gamble. HMRC will work through the list and the vast majority on it can expect to be contacted sooner or later.
On this occassion I'm at one with KPMG.
Please confess by 22 June. You're doing yourself a favour.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
You never once allude to the possibility that the level of avoidance might be lower than estimated. The amount of withholding tax generated in Switzerland, Luxembourg and the British Isles centres under the EUSD turned out lower than expected (albeit massive funds did move to Singapore and other centres to avoid the provisions).
Of course evasion goes on. It always has done and it always will. It’s not right, and despite what you might think, it’s not condoned by those of us working in the finance centres offshore. But the fact is, there is nothing wrong in a UK resident having a bank account offshore PROVIDED the income is reported on the self assessment return. Whose to say most of them don’t report their offshore income?
If I was one of those 400,000 people, and I had declared my offshore income in the proper way, I’d be mightily p**sed off that my bank had breached my data protection rights by not keeping my confidential and legitimate safe in an offshore location.
Ian
You are right. But then I don’t allude to belief in fairies either.
The EU SD did not collect tax because it is known that there was a massive effort by the financial services industry to shift deposits to trusts, for example.
And candidly, I do think large parts (but not all) of the offshroe world condone evasion. Jersey’s new trust laws are specific evidence that the establishment does in that island. The evidence is published on this site.
As for data protection rights – these are established by law and nothing more. Society rightly wants protection from thiefs. And so it should. That’s why the vast majority of people do not trust offshore, those who use it, and those who supply the services that are available there. We rightly call them corruption services.
Try as I might I can foresee no net loss to society if the offshore world shut down, entirely.
Richard
[…] Please use the UK tax amnesty, now […]