From the FT:
Alistair Darling will announce plans in next week's Budget for a new blacklist of British citizens and businesses who have evaded significant sums of tax as a deterrent to others.
The chancellor believes the public list, which will include anyone who has illegally escaped paying more than £25,000 of tax, will serve to limit the amount of evasion that takes place in the UK.
Yes! Yes! Yes, please.
Do it.
Make clear how anti-social this criminals are.
And then follow it up by publishing HMRC’s risk assessment on all the companies in the Large Business Service — each of which is given a ranking of low, medium and high.
I can think of no more useful risk assessment tool for investment managers today. No greater lever to apply to those who refuse to act with corporate responsibility. No better way of structuring a risk averse portfolio, which mot people want.
We have to make tax abuse uneconomic. It’s this sort of thing that will help do that.
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This is good news, BUT will the Chancellor publish with whom they bank & where? THAT would be seriously good progress!
Sadly I suspect if this was announced it will be used against tax evasion but not much against aggressive tax avoidance using ‘legitimate’ schemes which so many large companies and wealthy individuals have entered into.
Not only is this disappointing, but I think it’s one that would work. While name and shame has dubious merits when it comes to ‘ordinary crime’, for white collar crime, it’s been shown to be particularly effective in ensuring compliance.
To this I would add that the threat of shaming individuals and companies would have a deterrent effect on the accountants, lawyers, and others who supply the avoidance schemes.
TaxTwit
I’m in favour of the idea BUT fear it will be counter-productive as the list will be so short given the (apparent) definition of who will be on it.
It seems that the comparison would be with those who get imprisoned, not with the much larger numbers of (alleged) criminals who get caught and let off with a caution, ASBOs or whose legal team successfully challenge the prosecution on technical grounds.