The UK’s chief taxman has gone live online with a video urging offshore savers to tell HM Revenue and Customs about their investments by the end of the month or face prosecution.
Dave Hartnett, permanent secretary for tax at HMRC has posted a two-minute video on YouTube (Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7qb8Y8RvE0) urging tax dodgers to face up to their responsibilities.
This is the latest move in the HMRC strategy to track down UK residents with offshore bank accounts that pay interest on savings that is not declared on tax returns.
HMRC agrees having money offshore is not illegal – but earning interest and not paying tax on what is received is and is costing the government about £0.5 billion a year in lost tax.
“For some people, offshore bank accounts and tax havens typically conjure up images of exotic and far away places, well out of the reach of the taxman at home,” Mr Hartnett says in the video.
“Well, life’s just not like that any more. The taxman now has more powers and more information.”
UK taxpayers with money in offshore accounts run by 300 UK and foreign banks are offered the chance to confess to hiding taxable income by November 30, 2009.
Hartnett says in the video that the warning is “not a hollow threat” and that taxpayers who fail to come forward and are found to have undeclared tax liabilities will face a fine of at between 30% and 100% of any unpaid tax plus they will still have to pay the tax due.
Taxpayers who come forward before the deadline will have their penalty capped at 10% of the unpaid tax, or 20% if they failed to declare during the first disclosure campaign that ended in 2007.
