Serious tax evasion cases jump 8% in a year and 3,000 cases have been referred for specialist investigation.
The number of serious tax evasion cases identified by HMRC in the past year has risen by 8%. According to Pinsent Masons, a further 3,000 suspected instances have been referred for specialist investigation.
In the 2015 summer Budget, HMRC was granted an extra £800m to invest in compliance and tax evasion, which it is expected to use to recover £7.2bn in unpaid tax by 2020. This increased budget is expected to result in tripling the number of criminal prosecutions into serious and complex tax crime to 100 a year within five years.
Fiona Fernie, partner at Pinsent Masons, said: ‘HMRC is using increasingly sophisticated tools and techniques to uncover wrongdoing – from closer liaison with overseas tax authorities, to cutting edge data analytics which can flag up anomalies or trends within the information that HMRC and other government agencies hold.’
