No Hiding Place

If there are any letting landlords or owners of residential and commercial property who are hiding their funds in offshore accounts to keep them away from the prying eyes of
the tax man .. watch out .. he’s after you.

A new crackdown on offshore tax avoidance schemes and accounts is being made by HM Revenue & Customs. Property people are not its only targets. It wants to catch anybody who’s trying to get with it by hiding undisclosed assets and monies in faraway places.

The tax man is on the tail of thousands of British based savers who have kept their overseas accounts secret to avoid paying their dues.

It’s a fresh attack on the overseas tax-dodgers and the Revenue is sending out more than 50,000 warning letters to people who live in the UK.

In serious cases the would-be tax avoiders will be prosecuted and could be looking at punitive penalties.

Revenue and Customs won an important legal victory last year which forced the big banks and lenders like RBS, Barclays, Lloyds TSB and HBOS to disclose details of nearly 500,000 customers who had offshore accounts.

For people who volunteered the information – who owned up and came clean - the tax man promised a cut-price incentive: a levy of just 10 per cent would be imposed on top of the tax and interest which was due.

But if dodgers continue in trying to hide accounts or lie about how little is in them - then they could face stiff penalties.

So many people have already owned up that the Revenue has collected £400million.

Last year – out of a sample of almost 500 offshore accounts held by UK residents – the Revenue discovered that on average of £16,000 in liabilities was owing Some examples were much higher.

Under this latest crack down it’s thought that tax offices throughout the country are supplying HM Revenue & Customs with intelligence about individual accounts and furnishing it with the special numbers of the accounts.


Pictured above - St.Moritz.