Informants made more than 40,000 calls to HMRC’s fraud hotline in 2017/18, for which HMRC made payments amounting to £343,500, according the Financial Times.
The increase in call volumes was partly explained by the merging of two hotlines, for tax evasion and customs fraud, into a single number that has been heavily promoted to the general public.
HMRC made ‘reward’ payments based on the amount of tax recovered as a direct result of the information provided, as well as on estimates of the loss of revenue prevented and other measurable benefits such as the time saved in working compliance cases.
According to HMRC, the total number of tip-offs received about tax evasion was nearer to 100,000, when online and postal reporting are taken into account.
Adam Craggs, tax partner at law firm RPC, said that HMRC appears to be going to ‘increasingly extreme lengths to bolster its investigations’. Craggs expressed concern that ‘paying informants for intelligence on tax evasion might appear to legitimise data theft, raising both legal and ethical issues’.
Informants made more than 40,000 calls to HMRC’s fraud hotline in 2017/18, for which HMRC made payments amounting to £343,500, according the Financial Times.
The increase in call volumes was partly explained by the merging of two hotlines, for tax evasion and customs fraud, into a single number that has been heavily promoted to the general public.
HMRC made ‘reward’ payments based on the amount of tax recovered as a direct result of the information provided, as well as on estimates of the loss of revenue prevented and other measurable benefits such as the time saved in working compliance cases.
According to HMRC, the total number of tip-offs received about tax evasion was nearer to 100,000, when online and postal reporting are taken into account.
Adam Craggs, tax partner at law firm RPC, said that HMRC appears to be going to ‘increasingly extreme lengths to bolster its investigations’. Craggs expressed concern that ‘paying informants for intelligence on tax evasion might appear to legitimise data theft, raising both legal and ethical issues’.
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