Revenue's Affluent Unit to expand
HMRC has recently announced that its Affluent Compliance Team is set to significantly increase as it embarks on a recruitment drive to procure an additional 100 inspectors towards the end of this month.
The Affluence Compliance Team is dedicated to ensuring that wealthy individuals play by the rules. The team currently has 200 staff based in 17 teams in six locations across the UK.
As well as scrutinizing the tax affairs of those whose with an annual income in excess of £150,000 or wealth ranging from £2.5 million – 20 million, the unit will also review those with wealth between £1 million – 2.5 million.
Typically, the Affluence Compliance Team will target wealthy people who:
- habitually use avoidance schemes
- have a low effective rate of tax across their total income
- have bank accounts in Switzerland who appear to be understating their tax liability
- fail to file their Self Assessment tax return on time
- avoid or evade Stamp Duty on property purchases
- have UK and offshore property portfolios
By the end of December the unit had raised additional tax of £75 million which was more than expected. The target is to bring in additional tax of £586 million by the end of 2015.
Roger Atkinson, Director of the Affluent Teams, said: “In September 2012 the Government announced an additional investment of £5 million, enabling us to recruit an extra 100 inspectors. We will recruit from within HMRC and externally and the new team will be fully operational by April and focused on delivering an additional £75 million a year. “We want to recruit people with external experience and appropriate qualifications for inspector and lead case director roles. We want people with recent commercial and corporate experience in personal tax to help us understand our customer base. This is an exciting opportunity to work at the forefront, tackling those who do not pay the right tax.
Good quality intelligence is central to catching the cheats and so we are expanding our Affluent Intelligence Unit fourfold.
This is very good news for all honest taxpayers.”
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