- Posted 11th March 2015
HMRC Reporting on Tax Evasion & HSBC Suisse Data Leak
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)’s approach to tax evasion is based on collecting the tax and interest due, changing taxpayer manners for discouraging them from further evasion in future. With imposing effective penalties, HMRC plans to control the tax evasion in UK. That is the reason HMRC have issued a statement regarding this matter and HSBC Suisse data leak as well.
HMRC has also set up a project ‘Operation SOLACE’ having 300 tax specialists examining the leaked HSBC Suisse data in a systematic manner. This will help to identify tax evasion and if the sufficient evidence for supporting enforcement against UK account holders is provided or not.
Since April 2010, the government has strongly supported HMRC’s approach by strengthening their power for dealing with evasion and has done following things:
- Secured £100 billion of compliance revenues
- Secured £31 billion from large business compliance work
- Brought in £2 billion of revenues from offshore tax evasion through international agreements and disclosure facilities
- Collected £135 million in tax, interest and penalties from people on the HSBC Suisse list
- Secured £852 million from the UK’s 6,000 richest people
- Made 42 changes to tax laws
- Won more than 80% of cases in tax tribunals
- Five-fold increase in criminal prosecutions for tax crimes
- Prosecuted more than 2,650 individuals for tax crimes
- Secured 2,718 years of prison sentences