HMRC tackles the medical profession with the Tax Health Plan

We professionals in the tax business are fond of offering tax health checks to prospective clients, but now we should be offering health checks to medical professionals, who are the target of HMRC's latest campaign to collect tax from perceived miscreants. I am sure the Revenue is not suggesting that all in the health business are into dodgy dealing and falsifying their tax returns, but presumably there must be a supposition that “extras” such as giving references to patients, signing passport applications and getting payments from pharmaceutical companies slip through into doctors' pockets unnoticed by their accountants or tax advisers. Those targeted who have something to report must notify their intention to do so by 31st March 2010 and have until 30th June 2010 to have made the disclosure and arranged to pay any tax that is due.

Given that we have had two opportunities for people to disclose their offshore bank accounts and we have the ongoing Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility, the HMRC tactic is simply to concentrate the minds of a particular group of taxpayers. I doubt that doctors are any worse or any better than many other trades or professions. I assume this must be the first of many initiatives targeting various sections of the business community.

Who will be next on the list? Pharmacists? Tyre fitters? Plumbers? Wheel-tappers and shunters? Accountants and allied professions? It is a novel idea to put each sector under the microscope, but it will take an awfully long time to get through the list. I hope HMRC gets some tax dodgers to confess, but doubt the tax take will be significant from each campaign, especially given the disappointing response to the recently closed second campaign on offshore accounts.

© Jon Stow 2010


Details of the HMRC Tax Health Plan

More on catching the tax dodgers

It was announced last month that HMRC's New Disclosure Opportunity deadline for those with undeclared offshore assets to come clean has been extended from 30th November 2009 to 4th January 2010. This is no doubt because rather fewer delinquent “customers” have come forward than Permanent Secretary for Tax Dave Hartnett hoped, despite the prospect of much more serious penalties for those who are caught or come forward later.

HMRC has also revamped its process for receiving anonymous tip-offs concerning tax evaders, details of which are here. To be truly anonymous, one would suppose that many would baulk at filling in an on-line form, given that web masters can generally see the IP address of whoever logs in to a web page; that is if they really want to. Similar identification issues would deter people from sending faxes.

I have a vision of the other choices:

1.Telephoning the 0800 number, remembering to withhold the caller's number, and then speaking in a hoarse whisper to drop the malefactor in it.
2.Sending an anonymous missive either with letters cut out of newspapers and stuck on to another sheet of paper, or longhand notes in purple or green ink, signed “Well-wisher” or “Bystander”.

The mind boggles, or at least mine does, but that may be the effect of Christmas being nearly upon us and my having done far too many Tax Returns for my own good.

© Jon Stow 2009

New tax amnesty and old habits

We are starting to hear a little more about the new tax amnesty in the UK, called by HM Revenue & Customs the “New Disclosure Opportunity (NDO),” which follows on from the 2007 amnesty. Now we know that since the original amnesty, which followed on from HMRC’s victory in the Courts over the UK banks defending unsuccessfully their Channel Island branch customers, HMRC has come by a lot more information. Indeed I can infer from what I have heard on the grapevine that the acquisition of information concerning the Lichtenstein accounts has borne fruit, and will continue to do so. Therefore I think that the NDO is aimed at this particular tranche of (non) taxpayers and may be the reason for the bullish £2Bn tax take punted in the Daily Telegraph report.

I guess my advice to the miscreants would be to grab the 10% fixed penalty (plus interest on late-paid tax) while they can; of course my advice is always to come clean because at least in theory, the more tax the fraudulent evaders have to pay, the less the tax burden for the rest of us (I wish). To my mind, failure to pay thousands or millions in tax which is properly due to the Exchequer is little different from robbing a bank or stealing millions in gold bullion.

There are those who have been caught already between amnesties, which is bad luck or just desserts for not having come forward the first time. There really will be no excuse for lying low in the next amnesty, and to be honest (me, not them) they would be well advised to talk to their tax advisers, accountants or lawyers now in readiness to make complete disclosures. If they do not, or if the disclosures are incomplete then it may well mean jail time (being British and pedantic I would like to say “gaol time”). Still, it might be hard to persuade die-hard evaders to put their hands up.

I am not taking the Revenue’s side so much as the side of truth and honesty. That said, if anyone wants to speak to me with a view to their coming clean on their undeclared income and gains, I will be pleased to represent them in dealing with HMRC as long as I am satisfied they wish to make a full disclosure. Naturally I offer a very discreet and totally confidential service.