Umbrella company contractors may want to ensure that they are not living beyond their declared means after HMRC announces it is going to get tough on tax evaders.
An HMRC spokesman recently told one of the UK’s leading national newspapers that the department is going to start searching eBay and Google to help win the battle against tax evasion.
The Revenue has got its hands on some innovative new tools that will pick out information about specified individuals and organisations. These applications can uncover anomalies between property income, bank interest and lifestyle indicators.
One way HMRC plans to catch out traders was explained by the spokesman. If the department determines that Mr X is running a business selling mobile phones on eBay, and the Revenue systems find that Mr X is a supermarket employee who has not mentioned online trading, he will be contacted by the department’s compliance staff.
The spokesman went on to say that the Revenue wanted to catch moonlighters and make them aware that it was on to them.
Mike Wells, the risk and intelligence director at HMRC, recently said that the Revenue hopes to maximise the exchange of information by being transparent in its areas of interest. According to him, the new HMRC campaigns are all about helping people pay any tax they might owe and reducing the tax gap.
The Revenue has also said that they will not pursue people who use sites like eBay to make the occasional sale. But will that in fact happen? Will we all live in fear of a knock on the door if we put our kids’ bikes up for sale on eBay?
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Image: Geneva – Jardin anglais – Binoculars by dibaer
