The tax office has come under fresh attack for failing to tackle multi-national tax avoidance while clamping down increasingly aggressively on individual taxpayers.
The coming months will see HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) step up its campaign against small-scale tax avoidance and evasion, despite promises of an investment in enquiries into large companies, a leading Scottish tax expert has warned.
“The Chancellor has promised that HMRC will invest more time and money on transfer pricing enquiries into large companies, but it is far more likely that during 2013 we will see yet more publicity about HMRC’s attacks on individual tax evaders and avoiders,” said Neil Whyte, tax partner at PKF in Edinburgh.
“Tax avoidance is acceptable up to a point, but HMRC will challenge it where it becomes ‘abusive’ and the general anti-abuse rule (GAAR) will give it an extra weapon from April 2013.”
The comments came as the revenue revealed that some of the United Kingdom’s biggest individual tax cheats were sentenced to more than 155 years behind bars last year. Details of some 30 of those jailed are being published online in the latest stage of HMRC’s tax evasion crackdown.