{"id":786,"date":"2020-01-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/2020\/01\/07\/hmrc-reflects-on-2019-successes\/"},"modified":"2020-01-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T00:00:00","slug":"hmrc-reflects-on-2019-successes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/2020\/01\/07\/hmrc-reflects-on-2019-successes\/","title":{"rendered":"HMRC reflects on 2019 successes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not all penalties levied by HMRC are civil, many cases are serious enough to warrant a criminal investigation. The first post in the “money” section of the gov.uk website in 2020 reflects on this. The title of the post is a give-a-way:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Busted! HMRC reveals biggest criminal cases of year 2019”<\/strong><\/p>\n

In what could be seen as a propaganda exercise HMRC are clearly underlining the fact that tax evasion of the criminal kind has their full attention. In more detail the press release says:<\/p>\n

This year’s top criminal cases include:<\/p>\n

1. 2 wealthy professionals who attempted to steal more than £60 million through a fraudulent tax avoidance scheme which claimed to invest in HIV research and conservation and were jailed for a total of 14 and a half years.<\/p>\n

2. A Berkshire-based gang that stole £34 million in VAT and laundered £87 million, the proceeds from selling illicit alcohol through bank accounts in Britain, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Dubai and other countries – were jailed for more than 46 years.<\/p>\n

3. A fugitive £17 million tax fraudster who is finally behind bars after he was tracked down to his Prague hideaway and brought back to the UK to serve his 8-year sentence.<\/p>\n

4. Five people, including the former owners of a Sussex petrol station, who were sentenced for distributing and selling an estimated 4.8 million litres of illicit fuel to unsuspecting motorists, including haulage companies across the South East.<\/p>\n

5. The jailing of a former Top Gear mechanic who helped father and son tax cheats escape from the UK via ferry and Eurotunnel prior to sentencing for a £1 million VAT fraud.<\/p>\n

6. Payback time for 5 wealthy tax fraudsters who were involved in one of the UK’s biggest tax frauds.<\/p>\n

7. An apparently jobless Londoner who enjoyed a sociable lifestyle of golf and exotic holidays by dodging tax on smuggled tobacco has been jailed.<\/p>\n

8. A charity treasurer who tried to steal more than £330,000 in a Gift Aid repayment fraud and spent the money on lavish cruise holidays.<\/p>\n

9. Our work with Interpol to take apart a pan-European crime gang involved in cigarette trafficking, drug smuggling and money laundering.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All in all, not a bad haul. We can expect HMRC to expand the range of their anti-tax evasion activities in 2020. No doubt the forthcoming spring budget will have the usual sprinkling of fine print, adding more regulation to the tax code.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not all penalties levied by HMRC are civil, many cases are serious enough to warrant a criminal investigation. The first post in the “money” section of the gov.uk website in 2020 reflects on this. The title of the post is a give-a-way: “Busted! HMRC reveals biggest criminal cases of year 2019” In what could be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","blog-left-layout","blog-style-postblock","","blog-alt-odd"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/taxbak.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}