help please for my mum?

[weesie81]

sorry if this is the wrong place but i have been trawling the web this morning trying to find any info about this matter.
my mum is in a mess she has lied about tax working 2 jobs in different names with different national insurance numbers however they have sent a letter today asking questions about the name national insurance number of the 2nd job and she does not know what to do about it?

she no longer has the 2nd job and gave it up a couple of years ago now however she was working for them at least 5 years maybe longer,she has no paperwork for the other job she shredded it.
she has a cleaning job with the local council where she does not need to pay any tax, but took extra cleaning job couple of hours at night as a favour to someone and just stuck with it.
she knows she has been beyond stupid but is worried sick and is wondering what is the best way to deal with this situation now? she does not want the small cleaning company to get into any trouble either even though they knew what she was doing?
does anyone have any advice about what to do next or what penalties she may face?
should she come clean or claim its a mistake?
please help

[robbob]

Hello weesie81

The only sensible thing to do in a situation like this is to come clean with a full and complete disclosure to ALL the relevent bdies that have been defrauded.
If she does not provide full and complete details then she will probably always be worrying if another public body/the same public body will come back a later date and start to dig deeper than they have done as of yet.

Anything short of a full disclosure will be looked upon in a very bad way by a judge or a n other if there is to be any leniency shown.
An unsolicited full and frank disclouse is also much better than a forced full and frank discoluse so don't wait till the last minute to come clean.

After this is done she can then take whatever punishment is handed out and carry on with her life in the knowledge that she will not get into further trouble at a later date.

As a priority she should probably also seek legal advise and follow this is closely as possible.

she does not want the small cleaning company to get into any trouble either even though they knew what she was doing?

I would not worry too about the cleaning company to much in a situation like this,they have made their own choices and will have to deal with the consequences as things pan out.It sounds like they are the more innocent party here if your mother has gone to the trouble of using a fake name and fake ni number.There should not have been any "cash" saving for them using one name over another - although it may have been easier from an admin point of view if she was paid gross rather than net - with the deduction being passed to hmrc.

It may be that if her earnings are below the tax threshold - say an average of £100 per week over the last few years - then there may not be any/much loss of tax but i suspect from a legal point of view using a false name is a quite serious offence.

[weesie81]

thank you so much for the advice, so she should just get in touch re the letter and explain herself?
what about the fact she no longer has any paperwork relating to that job? wage slips etc have all been shredded she said when i asked her about dates etc this morning.
the wrong name started off as a mistake as the employer assumed she was married and used her partner's surname, however she never corrected them and i think this is where the idea of not giving them the correct national insurance number came from.
when you say legal advice who should she contact, a specialist tax lawyer?
i had no idea for all these years this had been going on to say i am shocked is an understatement.

[taxbiz]

Sounds like an awkward situation and your mum must be worried. I hope it manages to get sorted.