The OECD has published peer reviews on the legal framework for transparency and exchange of tax information in Andorra, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Austria, Bahrain, the British Virgin Islands, Curaçao, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
HMRC are consulting on draft regulations to give effect to the new EU Mutual Assistance in Recovery Directive, Council Directive 2010/24/EU (‘MARD’).
HMRC do not recognise or give ‘proper credit’ for a tax agent’s membership of a professional body, the ICAEW Tax Faculty said in response to the department’s consultation on a strategy for engaging with tax agents.
A man who set up more than 50 fake tax agent companies to commit a £1m tax fraud has been jailed for two years.
HMRC have been released from an undertaking restricting certain covert activity by the department’s criminal investigators, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury announced.
The Chartered Institute of Taxation has commended HMRC’s ‘willingness to listen’ to criticisms of the department’s original proposals to tackle dishonest conduct by tax agents.
‘The world has changed for tax evaders,’ Dave Hartnett, Permanent Secretary for Tax at HMRC, said as HM Treasury announced yesterday’s agreement with Switzerland to address evasion by UK taxpayers.
The UK’s tax deal with Switzerland is expected to come into force in 2013, following scrutiny by Parliament and after ratification procedures in Switzerland are complete, HM Treasury said.