Tax Avoidance Advisers To Be Fined Too

Tax Avoidance Advisers To Be Fined Too.

Budget 2016 suggested that government would take further tax anti-avoidance measures.

This week HMRC has published a consultation document looking for feedback to not just penalise those individuals and companies that establish tax avoidance schemes that are subsequently defeated in the Courts but to also penalise the tax advisers that set up these schemes.

They are targeting the “supply chain” i.e. all parties that are involved in the scheme and these potential sanctions will add to the current requirement that when a tax adviser spots a ‘loop hole’ in tax law and establishes a scheme, they are required to high light this to HMRC and explain how their anti-avoidance scheme works.

Comment

We appreciate the sentiment but we suggest that both the government and HMRC are deliberately ignoring the biggest tax avoidance schemes on earth, that of offshore trusts and offshore companies inside trusts, investing monies but then having anonymous directors meaning that it is traditionally difficult to trace who the beneficial owners of certain transactions, gains or income, Panama, British Virgin Islands and many offshore tax ‘havens’ come to mind.

It is right that the architects of tax avoidance schemes should be penalised but we suggest a ‘blind eye’ is being taken against British dependent territories given that if there offshore finance centre trade is curtailed, then it is the British Government that would need to support them.