{"id":21875,"date":"2013-08-13T06:48:38","date_gmt":"2013-08-13T05:48:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=21875"},"modified":"2013-08-13T06:48:38","modified_gmt":"2013-08-13T05:48:38","slug":"late-but-welcome-none-the-less-the-government-cracks-down-on-the-suppliers-of-tax-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2013\/08\/13\/late-but-welcome-none-the-less-the-government-cracks-down-on-the-suppliers-of-tax-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Late, but welcome none the less: the government cracks down on the suppliers of tax abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have long argued, as have others, that tax avoidance is a supply driven market. Without the activities of what Prem Sikka calls the pinstripe mafia<\/a>\u00a0then there would be little of the tax abuse that has plagued society.<\/p>\n

Now, at long last, and decidedly late, the government has decided to crack down on the suppliers of tax abuse. A new consultation on the issue was launched yesterday<\/a> in the forward to which my old friend (sic) David Gauke MP said:<\/p>\n

There is evidence that many mainstream tax advisers are increasingly unwilling to\u00a0advise clients to undertake tax avoidance. For those who persist in promoting\u00a0avoidance, we expect them to be transparent with HMRC about what they are doing\u00a0and transparent with their clients about the risks involved in undertaking tax\u00a0avoidance. Reputable advisers recognise it is their professional responsibility to be\u00a0transparent and we will not tolerate promoters who sidestep their responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Those promoters are out of step with the sector in which they work, with the vast\u00a0majority of tax advisers keen to distance themselves from the few high-risk promoters.\u00a0They are also out of step with society at large, which has made it clear there is no\u00a0tolerance for tax avoidance.<\/p>\n

Through new proposals to:
\n\u00ef\u201a\u00b7 identify publicly high-risk promoters of avoidance schemes;
\n\u00ef\u201a\u00b7 isolate them from mainstream advisers;
\n\u00ef\u201a\u00b7 use information powers to get early information about their products; and
\n\u00ef\u201a\u00b7 make it clear to their customers who they are dealing with
\nwe will make it significantly harder to market avoidance in the first place.<\/p>\n

That will be underscored by significant new penalties for failure to comply with the new\u00a0regime and higher standards for reasonable excuse and reasonable care that will\u00a0apply to attempts to sidestep it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The intention is clear: the purveyors of abusive avoidance will be labelled as such. I strongly suspect that some I think fit the category will not get the label, but this is a step in the right direction and one that I have called for over a long period. It would be churlish not to welcome it now the process is, hopefully, underway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have long argued, as have others, that tax avoidance is a supply driven market. Without the activities of what Prem Sikka calls the pinstripe
 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":[67,107,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accountancy","category-hmrc","category-tax-avoidance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21875","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=21875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21875\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}