George Osborne’s tax crackdown on super-rich branded ‘woefully inadequate’

“Woefully inadequate”: George Osborne.

Only 11 prosecutions for offshore tax evasion since 2010?

Is that a failure – or was it the plan?

George Osborne’s efforts to chase wealthy tax avoiders are “woefully inadequate”, says an MPs’ report.

HM Revenue & Customs has failed to pursue and prosecute Britain’s super-rich who “hide their assets offshore”.

And its customer service is so poor it has “an adverse impact” on tax collection, the Public Accounts Committee blasted.

The Chancellor, in Berlin for EU reform talks, is in charge of the HMRC.

He said in his Summer Budget that tax avoiders should have “nowhere to hide”.

But MPs say the “number of criminal prosecutions for offshore tax evasion is still woefully inadequate”.

The Committee said it was “incredible” that there have been only 11 prosecutions for offshore tax evasion since 2010.

The tax gap, the sum the Treasury fails to collect, is noted at £34billion for 2012-13, though this figure does not include “aggressive tax avoidance schemes”.

Source: George Osborne’s tax crackdown on super-rich branded ‘woefully inadequate’ – Mirror Online

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6 thoughts on “George Osborne’s tax crackdown on super-rich branded ‘woefully inadequate’

  1. Dez

    What a pathetic two faced muppet Ossie is. At great cost a whole army of tax inspectors has been recruited to go forth, kick arse and multiply but yet again this mini army chooses the easy down market path rather than the more lucrative and obvious upward view. i guess window cleaners and taxi drivers are easy targets like the disabled
    in their other cut back areas. Watch out for the well publicised gotcha stories to make it all seem worth while. Meanwhile diddly squat is happening to deal with the off shore tax havens, doms and lucrative psuedo intercompany royalty markup profits the blue chips use to avoid paying tax.. So the majority of the super rich elite can manipulate the tax sytem untouched and the minions get beaten up for every penny because they have no real escape from having to pay their salary taxes. And then there was the whistle blower who revealed thousands of secret overseas bank accounts ….. how many prosecutions have taken place and how much recovered?

  2. thelovelywibblywobblyoldlady

    The other thing Gidiot has never addressed is dividends paid to directors. It works like this; Director has Ltd company, company makes a profit which is carried forward to the following year. Director pays him/herself a “wage” which is at or above National Minimum wage but below tax threshold for income tax & national insurance. (I’ll come back to that in a minute) Director can take some or all of the profit as a dividend.
    Dividends are only subjected to notional tax (which at 9.75% is below basic rate tax) and are not subject to national insurance. So the director gets a small wage and a massive amount of dividends upon which minimum tax and no national insurance is paid.
    Regarding the wage paid, I think it should be commensurate with their skills level because you have the bizarre situation where say, in a hairdressers for example, a director who is highly skilled is receiving a wage which is less than a senior stylist, so the senior stylist ends up paying more tax than the director that is getting the tiny wage and the massive dividends.

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