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HMRC have pledged to spend almost £1 billion on combating tax avoidance and evasion.
The Revenue’s newly published business plan for 2009-10 assigns 24% of the department’s £4 billion annual budget to enforcement and compliance operations – and it promises to ‘relentlessly pursue the minority of businesses and individuals who choose to bend or break the rules’.
The hope is to recoup around £2.4 billion lost as a result of tax dodges.
HMRC’s announcement follows measures taken in last week’s Budget to better protect tax revenues. These included the controversial plan to ‘name and shame’ deliberate tax defaulters and the launch of the long-awaited New Disclosure Opportunity, targeted at people with undeclared income in offshore bank accounts.
The Revenue says it will spend £960 million on anti-tax evasion measures, including new IT tools, dedicated teams, establishing new powers, legal proceedings.
The department is aiming to streamline its enquiry and investigation processes to improve productivity, and ‘deter criminal activity…[by] changing the rules where necessary’.
Investigation and legal action will also play a major part in the Revenue’s actions to reduce instances of tax avoidance over the next 12 months. The taxman has pledged to advise government ministers on new legislation aimed at closing down avoidance schemes and simplifying current anti-avoidance laws.
