As foreshadowed at Autumn Statement 2015 the Government has published a consultation document ‘Tackling Offshore Tax Evasion: A Requirement to Correct’. The consultation period closes on 19 October 2016.
The essence of the requirement to correct (RTC) is that any person with UK tax irregularities related to offshore interests must come forward and correct those liabilities by 30 September 2018. After September 2018 any person found to have failed to correct their affairs will be subject to a new set of, tougher, sanctions.
The context of this new policy is what HMRC views as the changing scope of information exchange. HMRC strategy (No Safe Havens, 2014) includes an objective that there should be no jurisdictions where UK taxpayers feel safe to hide their income and assets from HMRC. However in the past it has been difficult for HMRC to detect offshore evasion owing to lack of data. It is thought that this will change greatly with Common Reporting Standards (effective from 2018 and involving automatic exchange of tax data by over 100 countries) and exchange of data from registers of beneficial ownership.
In December 2015 HMRC closed previous offshore disclosure facilities and will launch a new, tougher Worldwide Disclosure Facility on 5 September 2016.
This article appears in the JHA August 2016 Tax Newsletter, which also features:
