Middle Britain caught in blitz on tax havens | Mail Online.
Bizarre article from the Mail on Sunday:
Revenue & Customs investigators are training their sights on the middle classes as part of a crackdown on tax evasion.
They plan to prosecute anyone who fails to own up by the end of this month to earning money in an offshore bank account.
A special 20-strong team is being put together to investigate suspicious cases and identify tens of thousands of people thought to be using tax havens to evade the Revenue.
What are they trying to say? Only prosecute the working class who commit what they call 'benefit fraud' whilst leaving alone those middle class who tax evade?
It's hard to find another interpretation.
And that, to misquote the Taxpayer's Alliance is "outrageous".
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It seems, according to the article, that if one was to owe less than £10K then one wouldn’t be prosecuted by HMRC.
Is it the same rule for benefit fraudsters? Or because they are of the working classes do different rules apply?
What a stupid and unjust society the UK fosters. And if you don’t come from the UK and you just live there you have a £30K tax cap. How unjust
Now when will the G20 set their mind to these abusive practices?
John
Agreed
I’d tackle all these issues
And you’ll note, I’m not afraid to say so
Richard
Er…
I’ve read the Mail article linked. I don’t see a mention at all of “working class benefit frauds”, nor of any suggestion whatsoever that such a “blitz” on undisclosed bank accounts is undesirable.
Perhaps you could help me?
Peter.
Richard
So at what level is tax planning acceptable. A little tax avoidance scheme for a left wing newspaper is OK, but a big one for a right wing media company isn’t?
The DoTAS rules appear to have been a good way for HMRC to plan changes to legislation (and has certainly been successful in reducing the volume of “schemes”), but the cynical might just think that the “big boys” have been using creative measures to avoid disclosing these schemes, and saving the best planning techniques for the richest who can be charged the highest fees.
Perhaps there is now less social equality in tax inequity, it now being the preserve of the very rich
Peter
Prosecutions could be launched against people who owe as little as £10,000 to the Exchequer, according to Dave Hartnett, permanent secretary for tax at Revenue & Customs
So if your evading less that £10K then you aren’t going to get criminally prosecuted….
There is then a comparison to benefit fraud, which has no such “de minimis”
John
Tax planning is fine so long as the aim is tax compliance: Tax compliance is seeking to pay the right amount of tax (but no more) in the right place at the right time where right means that the economic substance of the transactions undertaken coincides with the place and form in which they are reported for taxation purposes.
If the aim is tax avoidance there should be zero tolerance
Richard
Richard
I think that’s where the problem is. Companies need [are required] to comply with the law, rather than principles.
But it appears HMRC don’t agree with you on zero tolerance. They do not appear to be seeking to deal with simple matters of statutory compliance, so how could they deal with principles?
Also, wasn’t banking regulation principles based. Did that work?
although of course tax avoidance is not a criminal activity, so your (and anybody else’s) tolerance levels are entirely irrelevant.
actually I think the article is a reltatively straightforward reporting of HMRC intentions. I think what you are reading into it reflects your own prejudices – perhaps an apology is in order.