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Jeremy Stretton of HMRC explains a little bit about how the Taskforces work and what they are intended to achieve.

As Taskforce Project Lead, I am responsible for HMRC’s Enforcement and Compliance Taskforces. These have been running since May 2011 and I am pleased that TW has invited me to update readers on how HMRC thinks these new Taskforces have done, and the benefit to UK taxpayers generally.

I think it’s important for readers to know that we are not simply targeting smaller businesses, which don’t have the resources or knowledge to comply perfectly with all of the tax rules and regulations. That is absolutely not what we are about. Nor are we about targeting businesses or professionals where we do not have grounds to suspect potential tax evasion.

As I have put in greater detail in my article Tax Taskforces - Most Taxpayers Approve, we are instead working very hard to identify and then tackle businesses and individuals who are knowingly and wilfully breaking the rules so as not to pay significant amounts of tax. The amounts of the tax assessments raised already – and the number of cases we are currently working on our Criminal Investigation teams – should indicate both the scale on which those businesses were operating and the commitment we have to combating these activities.

I hope that the vast majority of taxpayers and businesses will feel reassured that we are doing our best to help the very worst offenders to “pay their fair share”, and to reassure anyone who is currently in the process of knowingly and deliberately underpaying tax that HMRC will soon be helping them to pay their fair share as well.

Best wishes,

Jeremy Stretton