‘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.
An ‘historic’ agreement with Switzerland will resolve abuse of Swiss banking secrecy by UK taxpayers and is expected to secure billions of pounds of unpaid tax from 2013, HM Treasury announced last night.
Draft guidance for HMRC staff on the department’s updated Litigation and Settlement Strategy (LSS) runs to 45 pages.
The ‘refreshed’ LSS published last month sets out the principles governing HMRC’s handling of disputes in relation to taxes, duties and tax credits.
‘These arrests are just the start,’ said a senior HMRC official as the department announced the arrest of five plumbers in London, Hampshire, Surrey, Middlesex and the West Midlands.
More than 600 tax enquiries targeting people in the plumbing industry will be under way by the time the Plumbers Tax Safe Plan disclosure opportunity closes at the end of this month, HMRC have warned.
HMRC are inviting comments on a proposed contractual disclosure facility to tighten the department’s procedures for the civil investigation of fraud and identify taxpayers who are not ‘honestly engaged’ with the system.
Draft, detailed guidance on HMRC’s ‘refreshed’ Litigation and Settlements Strategy will be published shortly, HMRC have told Tax Journal.
HMRC have launched their fourth tax evasion task force in three months, declaring that ‘there is a problem with some fast food outlets deliberately falsifying their records and mis-declaring their true sales levels’.