{"id":16636,"date":"2012-07-31T13:03:49","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T12:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=16636"},"modified":"2012-07-31T13:03:49","modified_gmt":"2012-07-31T12:03:49","slug":"we-need-to-pay-tax-whistleblowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/07\/31\/we-need-to-pay-tax-whistleblowers\/","title":{"rendered":"We need to pay tax whistleblowers"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the Telegraph reported this\u00a0morning<\/a>:<\/p>\n

HM Revenue & Customs has been handing out hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in the little-known bounty payments as public concern about who pays their fair share has grown.<\/p>\n

Rewards to members of the public rose by more than a fifth, to \u00a3374,000 in 2011-12, compared with the previous financial year, HMRC figures released to Exaro, an investigative website, show.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It's been\u00a0suggested re than \u00a340 million was recovered as a result - suggesting\u00a0payments may be less than 1% of sums recovered.<\/p>\n

No wonder the system does not work well enough. Compare with the USA:<\/a><\/p>\n

You\u2019ve probably read about IRS whistleblowers cashing in for reporting suspected tax fraud. It may\u00a0seem<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0to be anew<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0development, but IRS whistleblowing incentives started in\u00a01867! Still, big changes in 2006 raised the stakes materially, adding new\u00a0Section 7623(b).<\/p>\n

Under it, awards to whistleblowers are no longer discretionary. Now, the whistleblower\u00a0\u201cshall\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>receive 15 to 30 percent of the collected proceeds. That\u2019s\u00a0shall,<\/strong><\/em>not may<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now there are still problems with their system, but the reality is that we have a long history of paying for information that leads to the successful prosecution of crime and we are talking about crime here for that is what tax evasion is.<\/p>\n

And that's why I think we\u00a0should have a stronger and more formalised system here so that those who know of tax abuse have an incentive to report it and the risk for those doing it is increased.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the Telegraph reported this\u00a0morning: HM Revenue & Customs has been handing out hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in the little-known bounty payments
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-evasion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16636\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}