The amount of money paid out for information about individuals or companies in relation to small-scale tax evasion came to £473,000 in 2019/20, and increase of from £182,000 from the previous year.
HMRC is under pressure to investigate bigger companies for tax evasion and is paying key informants for information to fraudulent activities. A big potential fraud opportunity at the moment is around the governments coronavirus job retention scheme.
HMRC is already taking action on fraud relating to the furlough scheme, payments to informants have traditionally been made to unhappy employees, or ex-employees reporting the underpayment of tax.
Another useful source of information is former spouses who are happy to provide information relating to tax fraud committed by their ex-partner.
As HMRC is ramping up their investigations. As a company or a sole trader, you could be subject to an investigation which could take weeks or months to get through.
AEL are able to provide you with a fee protection scheme to help cover the thousands of pounds a HMRC investigation could cost you in the time taken to provide them with any requested information in-order to be able to undertake an investigation.
For more information, please get in touch – https://aelmarkhams.co.uk/contact/
