On the day that Harry Redknapp and Milan Mandaric of Portsmouth Football Club have been cleared of tax evasion, HMRC have announced two new campaigns to catch tax dodgers. HMRC will target tradespeople working in the home improvement market, and people who receive income from buying and selling goods online.
HMRC revealed that they’ll use new technology to search the internet for information about specified, targeted people and businesses. The new campaigns will focus on:
- Missing returns: This will contribute to wider HMRC activity tackling failure to complete tax returns. It will initially focus on those who fail to complete tax returns and who are liable to pay tax at the highest rates.
- Home improvement trades: This will build on campaigns aimed at plumbers and electricians, and will include several 100,000 tradespeople in construction and building work.
- Direct selling: This will target customers who ought to be paying tax on income they earn from buying and selling goods direct to others, or from the commission on these sales. HMRC elaborated to explain that this will cover those who are using e-marketplaces to buy and sell goods as a trade or business and who fail to pay the tax owed. People who only sell a few items and who are not traders are unlikely to be liable to tax and will not be targeted by this campaign.
As with previous campaigns, the focus of the new campaigns will be on providing those in the selected groups, who may not be paying the tax they owe, a chance to put their affairs in order on the best possible terms. However be warned, those who HMRC find as part of follow up work can expect the highest penalty available, so if you need to start paying tax it is in your interest to contact the tax man before they come knocking on your door.
10 Responses
They will get a better return by targeting premiership footballers and bankers and their various tax avoidence scams (sorry I mean schemes).
Most of the home improvement folk that will be targeted are foreign and if they get any sense that HMRC are sniffing they will simply leave the country for a while before returning.
Direct selling – how many sellers who don’t submit a return make a clear profit in excess of the £7500 personal allowance?
For many its part time. We full time sellers who moan about the “business privates” are ultimately realists and know that the competition from this area is never going to go away.
In the scheme of things on the face of it this is going to net a very small return for the work required and HMRC, whilst making loud noises, will ultimately, as they always do, give up and move on.
Only if eBay offer their full cooperation and open up their entire sales database to HMRC will HMRC get some sort of result. But are HMRC going to contact eBay and are eBay going to open up their database?
yeah and every one that speeds on the m25 is going to get a ticket and everyone who smokes a spliff is going to be cautioned the only thing that is guaranteed is thatbyou will getba parking ticket in edinburgh