General Chat

A group of “tax cheats” have been named publicly by Revenue & Customs for the first time. Under new powers allowing the taxman to identify deliberate tax defaulters who have not been criminally prosecuted, names and addresses of a hairdresser from Liverpool, a grocer from Kirkcaldy and a Bolton coach operator were posted online.

The Chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said: "They have named and shamed a whole lot of small and medium sized businesses. That is welcome because everyone should pay their tax. But I hope that they are not letting bigger fish off of the hook."

The tax owed by the nine on the list amounted to less than £1million, far less than the £5billion understood to be lost every year because of aggressive tax avoidance by big corporations.

I don't know why there is a need to name names, what purpose does it serve, if Mrs Smith, knows Mrs Jones' business?

In our local rag, there is a section where they publish the names of some people who have appeared in court that week for offences such as shoplifting, motoring offences, and such like, I know of people who look through this list, to see if they know of anyone, in other words they are just nosey old so and so's. If someone's caught speeding, what is that to do with me?
There are too many nosey old bags, without creating more of them

HMRC are always right, even if they are wrong!

Although the policy 'might' shame other laggard payers into complying with their Demands, I don't trust the HMRC to not make mistakes.

Our son in law was fined for not completing a tax return - they said that they had sent one to his address............2 years before he bought the place! Go figure!!!

they will not name any big names because they come to nice cosey arrangements with hmrc to pay and agread amount which is probably less than they fiddled but save the expense of an investigation

Court proceedings are normally open to the public who can hear the evidence and verdict.
In the Name and Shame campaign HRMC are acting as judge and jury, publishing the verdict without the evidence.
So whilst their motive of protecting the public purse may be honourable I don't believe it is just, since HRMC are quite capable of making mistakes, as I found out too frequently in my professional capacity.

I used to be the manager for the finance department of a medium sized business, in Kent and several years ago we were subject to a random audit by HMRC.

When the inspectors arrived it turned out that one of them was a mate who I was at school with in Scotland, as a result much of the day was spent talking about old times etc.

In passing I asked him why HMRC did not spend their time pursuing those who tried everything to avoid tax instead of going around the country checking up on firms who followed the rules and paid their dues.

His reply was that it was far easier and less expensive to audit the records of firms who followed the rules and as long as they carried out the required number of audits each year HMRC could claim they had met the targets imposed by The Treasury :-|