Stoking the fire for tax avoidance schemes

[DigitalUser]

Anyone think the changes impacting dividends (and potentially T&S) is going to lead to an upturn in people entering tax avoidance schemes?

I can see the tagline shifting from 'get 90% after tax' to 'protect your income from HMRC (insert favourite caption here)'.

[BrilloPad]

I doubt anyone agrees. HMRC have so many weapons in their armoury. APNs. Retrospection.

The only way to avoid tax now is to be rich...

[Kenny@MyAccountantFriend]

Hard to say but due to the implications of entering the scheme and being discovered I would highly doubt it.

[TestMangler]

Anyone think the changes impacting dividends (and potentially T&S) is going to lead to an upturn in people entering tax avoidance schemes?

I can see the tagline shifting from 'get 90% after tax' to 'protect your income from HMRC (insert favourite caption here)'.

I expect it will lead to a massive upsurge in the selling of these schemes by agencies. Remember not all contractors are up to speed with anything to do with the legal/taxation side of contracting. Agencies will use it to push the sale of schemes. Haven't you heard ? In the budget, they changed all the rules to make dividends illegal ? All you have to do is sign here to keep 90% of your rate.....

There are literally thousands of contractors who would fall for that.

[TestMangler]

Hard to say but due to the implications of entering the scheme and being discovered I would highly doubt it.

Again, you are assuming that every contractor knows this.

I was working with people last year who were persuaded to sign up to schemes. No amount of telling them would help. Their attitude is that "the agency is going to know more about this than you do !"

[WordIsBond]

Any tax increase inevitably increases the incentive for people to look for ways around tax. The more it is, the more will be tempted to push the limits.

The higher taxes go, the greater the tax avoidance -- and evasion. Not every tax increase brings more money for the government, some tax increases are revenue-neutral and some cost money.

[cojak]

Well I'll still point and laugh at them before chucking them in the HMRC enquiries pond.