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The Revenue is set to significantly ramp up the number of its specialist anti-evasion squads, as the department turns its sights on car dealers and market stall holders.
Thirty new teams of investigators – which the taxman calls taskforces – will be launched in 2012/12 to crack down on dishonest behaviour in business sectors in specific locations.
The first of the taskforces were introduced last May to focus on restaurants in London, in a response to the government’s £917 million investment to tackle tax dodging and tax fraud.
HMRC went on to create 11 more teams dedicated to scrutinising alleged evasion by Scottish eateries and scrap metal dealers, and landlords and construction traders in northwest England and north Wales, among other groups.
The new investigation squads are likely to target the rag and motor trades, and indoor and outdoor markets, said the Revenue, which expects to collect over £50 million as a result of the dozen taskforces launched in 2011/12, which be extended in some areas in the coming tax year, and have so far led to 13 criminal investigations.
‘Taskforces target only people who are at high risk of breaking the rules and don’t pay the tax they owe,’ said HMRC’s director of local compliance, Richard Summersgill. ‘We know we’re going after the right people: some taskforces have hit rates of 100% so far.’
The Exchequer secretary to the Treasury, David Gauke, remarked: ‘It is completely unacceptable… that, while most hard-working people pay the right tax, there are others who try to get out of contributing their fair share.
‘HMRC have received lots of useful information on its evasion hotlines, which shows that the honest majority are quite rightly fed up with the dishonest minority.’
