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Mark McLaughlin publishes an update by HM Revenue & Customs on taxpayers waiting for a Tax Campaign to start.

In my editorial a couple of weeks ago, I looked at HMRC's campaigns aimed at persuading particular groups of taxpayers (e.g. plumbers) with undisclosed income to 'come clean' with HMRC and get their tax affairs in order.

I pointed out that HMRC's campaigns had caused some confusion and uncertainty, and asked:

"What about taxpayers who wish to come forward and make a disclosure to get their tax affairs in order, but are not within an HMRC campaign because they do not fall within the specific category of taxpayers being targeted? Should they come forward anyway, or should they wait and see if a future campaign covers them specifically?"

I wanted to know whether taxpayers who come forward to HMRC will be offered the same (or similar) terms to those who currently happen to be the subject of a specific campaign.

HMRC has kindly offered TaxationWeb guidance on some of the issues surrounding its campaigns, which is reproduced below.

"* The terms a taxpayer gets if they comes forward and make a full unprompted, voluntary disclosure at any time will be better than if we come to them. Waiting for a campaign disclosure opportunity will mean we could come to them as part of our normal business at any time. So it is sensible for people to come forward or they risk a much higher penalty and a lengthy enquiry process if caught.

* To be clear, we will not treat customers who could have come forward in a future campaign as 'prompted' just because they come forward after having heard about the future campaign.

* Anyone HMRC comes to before they come forward will not be able to claim they were waiting for a campaign in order to get terms similar to those available for voluntary disclosure.

* Campaign terms are only available during a campaign disclosure opportunity - they are set in the design of the campaign.

In essence, the terms available to someone who comes forward unprompted will be the best ones at that moment in time."

I am not sure that these comments deal with my concerns fully, but I hope that HMRC's guidance is of some assistance.

Best wishes,

Mark McLaughlin

Managing Editor