Tax Avoidance

(asked on 11th February 2020) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he is taking to ensure the proportionality of his Department's policy on (a) promoters and enablers of loan charge schemes and (b) people who have been mis-sold a financial arrangement.


Answered by
Jesse Norman Portrait
Jesse Norman
This question was answered on 19th February 2020

The Government is determined to continue to tackle promoters of tax avoidance schemes.

The Government announced measures to reduce the scope for promoters to market tax avoidance schemes in its response to the independent Loan Charge Review. Further detail of the measures will be set out at Budget, and new legislation will be scrutinised by Parliament during the passage of the 2020/21 Finance Bill.

In 2019/20 HMRC are doubling their resource involved in tackling promoters and have committed to publish a revised strategy for tackling promoters of tax avoidance schemes by the end of March 2020.

While the Government empathises with anyone who believes they were misled into using a disguised remuneration scheme, it is an individual’s responsibility to ensure the accuracy of their tax return and to understand the consequences of their decisions. It remains right that the Government takes action to tackle tax avoidance, which is unfair to the vast majority of taxpayers who pay the correct tax.

The Government does recognise the importance of taxpayers being able to get reliable tax advice and announced, in response to the Review, a call for evidence on what steps the Government can take to raise standards in the tax advice market to give taxpayers more assurance that the advice they are receiving is reliable.

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