employment schemes.
Strengthening Sanctions for Tax Avoidance
4 February 2015
HMRC has published the consultation paper, ‘ Strengthening Sanctions for Tax Avoidance ’, setting out proposals to tackle the serial use of tax avoidance schemes.
Tax avoiders can already face penalties, but this consultation proposes additional financial costs such as a surcharge and additional reporting requirements on users of multiple schemes that fail. Serial avoiders use multiple tax avoidance schemes at the same time – whether using the same avoidance scheme in more than one year, or using different avoidance schemes – to avoid significant amounts of tax. The consultation also considers whether, and how, to introduce additional penalties for cases where the General Anti-Abuse Rule (GAAR) applies. The GAAR counters the most abusive avoidance.
The closing date for comments is 12 March 2015
CIPP comment The Policy team will be reviewing these documents and if appropriate will issue a survey to gather members’ views shortly.
Promoters of tax avoidance schemes
16 February 2015
Guidance on the new rules that apply to promoters of tax avoidance has been published.
The guidance describes the legislation in Part 5 and Schedules 34 to 36 Finance Act 2014.
Part 5 contains new rules that apply to promoters of tax avoidance schemes and which aim to deter the development and use of avoidance schemes by influencing the behaviour of promoters, their intermediaries and clients. The objectives of the regime are to change the behaviour of a small and persistent minority of promoters of avoidance schemes who are not transparent with HMRC and display other behaviours detrimental to the fairness of the tax system. The regime aims to achieve its objectives by: requiring monitored promoters to disclose details of their products and clients to HMRC ensuring monitored promoters tell clients, potential clients and intermediaries that they are a monitored promoter minimising the risk of tax loss via avoidance schemes developed by promoters of tax avoidance schemes making sure that clients and intermediaries are fully aware of the risks of engaging in avoidance schemes. The regime builds on the existing regime for the disclosure of tax avoidance schemes (DOTAS), drawing on and reinforcing existing disclosure obligations and sharing many similar definitions. So this guidance frequently refers to the existing DOTAS guidance that may be found on the HMRC website.
CIPP Policy News Journal
08/04/2015, Page 512 of 521
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