{"id":25267,"date":"2014-06-25T16:33:10","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T15:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=25267"},"modified":"2014-06-25T16:33:10","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T15:33:10","slug":"government-introduces-bill-to-make-tax-fraud-even-easier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/06\/25\/government-introduces-bill-to-make-tax-fraud-even-easier\/","title":{"rendered":"Government introduces bill to make tax fraud even easier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In May I published my updated work on tax evasion in the UK. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/05\/20\/in-the-shade-the-uks-missing-economy\/\" target=\"_blank\">Entitled 'In the Shade',<\/a> one of the \u00a0explanations that it offered for the estimated \u00a347 billion \u00a0of tax fraud taking place in the UK was the ease with which companies can be registered and then subsequently be removed from the Register of Companies \u00a0without the company in question having ever filed a set of accounts or disclosed who its real owners might be. Around 400,000 \u00a0companies \u00a0a year \u00a0are struck off the Register each year, \u00a0with a considerable number of them having never filed any information at all. I have estimated that the annual \u00a0cost of these ' shadow \u00a0companies' might be \u00a311 billion.<\/p>\n<p>You would have thought that in the face this evidence, and the evidence that HMRC \u00a0do not either have the resources or the time to investigate sufficient of these companies before they disappear, that if a change in the law was to be made it would be to tighten up this procedure to ensure that it is harder for a company to disappear without trace, but the exact opposite has been announced today. Section 91 of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/bills\/cbill\/2014-2015\/0011\/cbill_2014-20150011_en_8.htm#pt8-pb7-l1g91\" target=\"_blank\">Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill<\/a> almost exactly \u00a0halves time it will take for a company to be struck from the \u00a0Register, \u00a0reducing it from six months to three.<\/p>\n<p>Tax fraudsters must be rubbing their hands with glee. It's just become \u00a0considerably easier for them to get away with a crime without almost anyone noticing.<\/p>\n<p>How stupid can the government be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In May I published my updated work on tax evasion in the UK. Entitled &#8216;In the Shade&#8217;, one of the \u00a0explanations that it offered for<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/06\/25\/government-introduces-bill-to-make-tax-fraud-even-easier\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/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":[138,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-companies-house","category-tax-evasion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25267","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=25267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}