The South Yorkshire Star, obviously reproducing a H M Revenue & Customs press release reported over the weekend:
Visitors to Easter car boot sales in South Yorkshire are being urged to be on the lookout for traders selling counterfeit and smuggled cigarettes and alcohol.
HM Revenue and Customs wants rogue traders to be reported to stop cut-price cigarettes and booze being sold.
Stuart Crookshank, Assistant Director for HMRC, said: “Low-cost tobacco and alcohol products can often seem very attractive to people who believe they are buying genuine products at a knock-down price.
“Those involved are not concerned if they are selling to children and under-age people. The illicit trade has a devastating impact on legitimate retailers and the local community. We all pay extra to compensate for the money these criminals steal.
“The profits from tobacco and alcohol smuggling fund other criminal activities including drug and people trafficking and cause real harm in the local community.
“With over £2 billion in unpaid revenue stolen last year from public funds through tobacco smuggling and around £1bnn through alcohol smuggling, this crime impacts hard on the UKs finances.”
Many illegally sold cigarette brands seized in the UK are known as ‘cheap whites,' made for smuggling and bought by crime gangs.
Three points:
First, I suspect the estimates of tax loss are, as is normal for HMRC, understated. These people don't just not pay duty. They also evade VAT, national insurance and income tax. All are part of the tax gap.
Second, If the effect is so serious why not employ offers to go to car boot sales and investigate the crime? It's not rocket science. It creates work. It stops crime. It raises revenue. It protects children. It protects local communities. It supports a level playing field for small business. It means the tax base is spread evenly.
Third the loss, at a minimum of £3bn is over 65% of the cost of running H M Revenue & Customs last year. Isn't that worth just a little more than a press release and a request for a tip off?
Sorry, but this is just not good enough HMRC. You make the case for action and then don't deliver it. Put a thousand people on monitoring such activity every weekend, backed up with the power to arrest, seize goods and close down car boot sales where illegal sales are taking place and to fine organisers who do nothing to stop it and this practice will be curtailed in no time at all at a significant profit to society as a whole.
What's stopping you? Anything more than George Osborne and his manic desire for cuts that impose burdens on all of us?
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Although I agree that HMRC need to do an awful lot more than this, I do think there’s a need for a ‘PR’ drive to raise awareness of the real implications of this activity. Our UKUncut friends have done a fine job of raising popular awareness of the tax gap, but they’re not so good at raising awareness of the parts of it that aren’t down to big companies and rich individuals. This is something that will help to get that message out and maybe help people to join the dots between getting cheap cigs from a car boot, and the local library being threatened with closure.
Sure, you’re right, but UK Uncut took action to make their point
They didn’t just issue a press release
Perhaps one of the problems is that the public are not always very good at collating figures and are unable recognize the scale of the problem. The government should publicise this problem (and its affects) via a simple schematic profit and loss account so that when the new HMRC inspectors arrive they will enjoy public support.
Excepting that the present government has little understanding of any sort of figures …