UK and International Tax news
HMRC Targets Offshore Account Holders
Wednesday 5th March 2014
HMRC has recently launched a new campaign targeting people with offshore accounts which coincides with the recent endorsement by the G20 group of finance ministers of the OECD’s new global standard for automatic exchange of tax information. The group calls on the governments of financial centres to sign up to new international tax information sharing agreements.
HMRC says that any taxpayer who has declared all their income has nothing to fear, but anyone who fails to do so will have to pay the tax as well as penalties of up to 200%, and could face imprisonment. Anyone in this position would be well advised to make a disclosure, as HMRC is collecting more and more information about offshore accounts and has sophisticated methods to analyse it.
HMRC has a web page about undeclared offshore income and how to disclose it .
Those affected should also consider obtaining specialist tax advice.
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