HMRC has published an updated list of deliberate tax defaulters. The list includes individuals, businesses and companies and lists the amounts on which penalties are due and the amount of penalties charged.

The current list of deliberate tax defaulters (updated on 16 November 2020) includes a Smethwick based used car business that owed penalties and tax of just over £5.8m and a Lincoln based waste handling business that owed over £2.5m. There are also many smaller penalties listed for businesses such as takeaways, builders, musicians and truck drivers.

A deliberate defaulter is a person who incurs a relevant penalty for one of the following:

• An inaccuracy in a return or document for a tax period beginning on or after 1 April 2010.
• A failure to comply with certain obligations, such as the obligation to notify HMRC of a liability to tax.
• A VAT or excise wrongdoing that occurred on or after 1 April 2010.
• Offshore tax non-compliance on or after 1 April 2017.

The measure affects the following groups of taxpayers:

• Taxpayers (individuals, businesses and companies) who are penalised for deliberately understating tax due, or overstating claims or losses, of more than £25,000.
• Taxpayers who are penalised for deliberately failing to notify HMRC when required to do so, leading to a loss of tax of more than £25,000.
• Taxpayers who are penalised for deliberately committing certain VAT and excise wrongdoings, leading to a loss of tax of more than £25,000.

Taxpayers who make unprompted disclosures or a satisfactory fully prompted disclosure are not affected by these rules. The details of a tax defaulter are held on HMRC’s website for a maximum of twelve months from the date they are first published and are not stored within the national archives.

Source: New feed