BN66 - Time to fight back!!!

[mossman]

Questions

Doess anyone know the answer to these questions:

1 If I transferred the house and all my savings into my wife's name, then divorced her, could they go after her for the money?

2 What's the quickest you can get divorced?

3 Does the Austrian Sparbuch anonymous bank account really exist, or is it a myth?

[BrilloPad]

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle4692626.ece

HM Revenue & Customs turns to City law firms to catch evadersRobert Watts

HM Revenue & Customs is planning to unleash some of the world’s most expensive lawyers on businesses and individuals suspected of evading tax.

So zealous has the tax authority’s chief, Dave Hartnett, become on taking court action in recent months, that the in-house Revenue Solicitor’s Office has been unable to cope with its workload.

To deal with a backlog of up to 1,000 cases, HMRC is for the first time planning to call in City law firms, whose partners charge up to £1,000 an hour. The policy remains at an early stage but the department has already hired Lovells to act for it in a cross-border tax case later this year.

Last year, HMRC published a new litigation strategy that said it would pursue a zero-tolerance strategy against individuals and businesses who try to dodge tax.

Related Links
Companies move abroad to escape tax
City exodus is yet another taxing issue
Previously, the department tended to cut deals with tax evaders, allowing some of them off the full amount owed if they agreed to pay up without a fuss.

Chris Oates, tax risk management partner at Ernst & Young, the accountant, said: “As a result of that policy change, more disputes now end up in court. It’s no surprise that the Revenue’s new litigious line is hitting its resources. The legal department is already under huge pressure and there have been concerns about how it would cope with the increased workload.”

Accountants fear that HMRC’s use of City law firms may prove costly to the public purse, with the Revenue showing itself keen to pursue even relatively minor cases.

Mike Warburton, the senior tax partner at Grant Thornton, said: “There will be City lawyers who will think Christmas has come early. Inspectors have started taking cases on relatively small amounts, regardless of cost and there is the potential for a great deal of taxpayers’ money going off to m’learned friends.”

Those firms likely to win business include the “magic circle” of Slaughter and May, Linklaters, Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy and Freshfields.

HMRC said yesterday: “There is no backlog with litigation. We have a very large litigation practice and we do almost all of it ourselves. As a responsible organisation we have for many years made use of the private sector to handle some of our smaller cases. We are currently experimenting with one of our middle-sized cases by asking a City firm to handle it for us.”

The decision to use more external solicitors has been driven through by Hartnett and Diane Hay, the Revenue’s deputy director of international corporation tax.

The policy has infuriated senior civil servants in the Revenue Solicitor’s Office, who fear their role is being undermined.

Stephen Camm, the partner who leads Price Waterhouse Coopers’s tax investigations practice, said that using external lawyers may speed up the Revenue’s turgid processes.

He said: “HMRC signalled that more tax disputes would be litigated but progress in turning that into reality has seemed painfully slow. Anything that HMRC can do to speed up and give taxpayers certainty earlier is to be welcomed.”

[Diver]

Mike Warburton, the senior tax partner at Grant Thornton, said: “There will be City lawyers who will think Christmas has come early. Inspectors have started taking cases on relatively small amounts, regardless of cost and there is the potential for a great deal of taxpayers’ money going off to m’learned friends.”

I think the general public need disclosure of costs under the freedom of information act, for this exercise.
Let's see some figures for what HMRC are spending, and what they are actually recovering.
There has to be a massive disparity. A disparity that the taxpayer is paying for.
There is a reason for the writing off of debt where cost of recovery of that debt; exceeds the value of debt recovered.
Are HMRC ignorant of the rules of simple mathematics?
Or are they simply figure juggling because they can show their masters that they recovered X amount of taxes, while keeping quiet the Z amount of litigation costs with a bit of fancy bookkeeping while demanding yet more taxpayers money with budget increases.

[BrilloPad]

I think the general public need disclosure of costs under the freedom of information act, for this exercise.
Let's see some figures for what HMRC are spending, and what they are actually recovering.
There has to be a massive disparity. A disparity that the taxpayer is paying for.
There is a reason for the writing off of debt where cost of recovery of that debt; exceeds the value of debt recovered.
Are HMRC ignorant of the rules of simple mathematics?
Or are they simply figure juggling because they can show their masters that they recovered X amount of taxes, while keeping quiet the Z amount of litigation costs with a bit of fancy bookkeeping while demanding yet more taxpayers money with budget increases.

Indeed. And it also increases resentment towards HMRC. IMO most people are happy to pay a sensible and fair amount of tax. They hate the assumption of guilty until proved innocent.

Without IR35 I doubt montpelier would ever have got off the ground.

Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

[administrator]

Due to an investigation regarding comments on this thread we have taken the decision to close this particular thread and continue it here:
http://forums.contractoruk.com/accou...continued.html

We appreciate the help that this thread has been to individuals who are affected by this issue and want to provide assistance to you.

We would also like to point out that comments made (in jest or not) regarding actions that may be taken on these persons can land you (and us) in a lot of trouble.

Please do feel free to continue the discussion here:
http://forums.contractoruk.com/accou...continued.html