HB Accountants

February

Builders targeted in latest HMRC crackdown

 

 

HMRC announce new campaigns

Earlier this week HMRC announced three new campaigns against tax evaders working in construction and building, people who make money from direct selling and people who fail to complete tax returns.

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 trades people in construction and building work such as roofing, window fitting, bricklaying, carpentry and joinery.
• 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.

Two further campaigns that will be launched before the end of 2011/12 will focus on:

• E-marketplaces. 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.
• Electricians. This will build on HMRC’s plumbers’ campaign and give an opportunity to another group of tradespeople to come forward and declare unpaid tax.

Previous tax clampdowns have focused on workers ranging from tutors and coaches, to plumbers and medics. People with money hidden in offshore bank accounts have also been targeted.

The tax campaigns aim to encourage people to own up about tax owed in return for favourable settlement terms.

The ‘voluntary disclosure’ programmes have so far recovered more than £500m in tax and £105m from follow-ups, HMRC said. HMRC is using new technology to analyse information in tax returns and cross-reference this with information on the Internet to help it track down tax cheats.

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