The post you are reporting:
HMRC`s accountants are not as sharp as the Tax avoidance Johnnies...............
HMRC say we lose £ 5 billion to Tax avoidance..............
The smart arsed Tax avoidance Johnnies say they save their clients £ 30 billion ................
How do we beat the Finance Johnnies ?
.Margaret Hodge: tax avoidance costs the Treasury £5bn a year
• Rich running rings round HMRC, says Margaret Hodge
• Call to name and shame promoters of avoidance schemes
Margaret Hodge wants HMRC to 'robustly' stamp out tax avoidance promoters.
The exchequer loses at least £5bn a year because the taxman is failing to crack down on
"morally wrong" tax avoidance schemes similar to the one used by comedian Jimmy Carr, .
Margaret Hodge, the former Labour minister, said rich businessmen designing the schemes
were "running rings" around HMRC.
She said HMRC had an "appallingly bad record" at catching tax cheats, having fined just 11 people
for promoting tax avoidance since 2004 - despite 10,000 people a year coming forward to report tax
avoidance schemes.
A report by the PAC published on Tuesday says there is "a lot of money to be made in selling
avoidance schemes", and commissions paid to the creators of the schemes can be up to 20%
of the tax saved.
Hodge told Lin Homer, chief executive and permanent secretary of HMRC, that she didn't want to be
"aggressive and awful about it", but the agency's failure to crack down on tax avoidance was "gobsmacking".
"There has been huge growth, and appalling proliferation [in tax avoidance], and what has HMRC
been up to? It has only taken 11 cases to tax tribunals," she said.
The 11 tax avoidance promoters taken to tribunal were fined just £5,000 each despite the
maximum penalty being £1m. Hodge said HMRC had never fined an individual for failing to
disclose a scheme on their tax return.
Hodge said HMRC must "robustly" crack down on tax avoidance promoters that are
"costing the country billions, as the public are struggling with less money in their pockets".
************* She added: "It offends the sense of fairness."***************
She called on tax avoiders and the businesses creating tax avoidance schemes to be "named and shamed".