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HMRC has no idea of scale of offshore tax evasion

13 June 2022
Issue: 4844 / Categories: News

In 2019 UK taxpayers held more than £850bn in overseas bank accounts of which £570bn was held in tax havens according to figures received by Tax Policy Associates in response to freedom of information requests.

Yet according to the information disclosure HMRC has ‘not produced or received any estimates analysis or statistical information as to what proportion of the foreign financial accounts have been "properly disclosed" nor can this be accurately inferred in the data we hold'.

In the interests of transparency Tax Policy Associates says HMRC should commit to various measures such as: 

  • publishing aggregated common reporting standard (CRS) statistics every year including the number of offshore accounts with balance details;
  • analysing the CRS data to estimate the proportion of accounts that have not been declared in UK tax returns – giving an approximate indication of the scale...

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