This week saw HMRC launch the first strategic task force aimed at tackling the problem of the minority of businesses that evade tax.
Our task forces comprise specialist compliance and enforcement teams drawn from throughout HMRC. The task forces will be deployed for intensive bursts of activity aimed at specific sectors and locations where we have intelligence of a high risk of tax evasion.
The first task force will focus on the restaurant trade, initially targeting businesses in London over the coming weeks. The restaurant trade in Scotland and the North West will be next. We are then planning nine further task forces in 2011/12, with more to follow in 2012/13.
These task forces represent a new approach – part of our deployment of the additional £900 million the Government has made available to HMRC in our Spending Review settlement to tackle evasion, avoidance and criminal fraud. Through these specialist teams, we will identify and tackle, swiftly and effectively, rule benders and rule breakers.
While honest businesses which have paid all their taxes have nothing to worry about, our task forces will use the full range of HMRC sanctions against those businesses found to have been evading tax. Sanctions can range from civil penalties through to criminal prosecution and, ultimately, jail.
The task forces are part of our broader work to tackle avoidance and evasion, which includes programmes such as Managing Deliberate Defaulters and offshore penalties.
These are challenging economic times and we are committed to raising an additional £7 billion in tax for the country by 2014/15 by coming down hard on tax evasion, avoidance and fraud.
In this difficult financial climate, it is only right that businesses across all sectors should be paying the tax the law says they must. The vast majority of businesses already do and play by the rules. We act on their behalf and in their interests when we say to the cheats: “Talk to us and allow us to help you to get your tax affairs in order, because the alternatives will prove far more costly.”
By Dave Hartnett, Permanent Secretary for Tax, HM Revenue & Customs
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Restaurants all over the country should soon see their takings increase beyond seasonal variations (and probably all in cash). With the upcoming purge on London Restaurants, restauranteers (ok restaraunt owners) should be looking out for a steady stream of new customers as HMRC teams converge on the likely tax evaders and entrap them by paying in cash. All those greedy tax evaders won't be able to resist pocketing the upsurge in cash takings only to be hoist by their own greed when it comes to working out how much they have been pocketing over the other 365 days in the year. HMRC will gauge their evaded takings figures by extrapolating the provable understatements on the day they were anonymously visited by groups of members of a team who started at opening time and end at closing time.They might even help you to cash up. <br /> <br /> Of course the smart ones will record everything to ensure that any subsequent checks come up with no understated takings. BUT will they be able to resist the temptation - I doubt it. <br /> <br /> If you have been extracting turnover without recording it then maybe the tiem is right to stop doing it and consult a tax disclosure expert before HMRC come to you.<br /> <br /> Bill at www.wamstaxltd.com can help or alternatively you can get help from other specialists by clicking on the "Find a Professional" at the top of the page and then clicking on the "Tax Investigations".