Letter sent to The Financial Times
Your on line reportage of
the" Panama Papers" (Panama leak prompts tax haven probes, 4 April) states that
"Authorities in the UK, France, Australia and New Zealand also said
they would look at any allegations of money laundering or tax avoidance that
arose from the document leak."
In the UK they will have to
be a bit more curious than the British Treasury, as was revealed in a
written Parliamentary answer to Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, who asked the
Chancellor late last year (question 20496): how many people were (a) prosecuted and (b)
convicted for (i) off-shore tax evasion, (ii) in-shore tax evasion, (iii) tax
credit fraud, (iv) VAT fraud, (v) smuggling and (vi) other tax-related offences
in each financial year since 2010-11?
The Treasury minister David
Gauke answered on 15 January:
"The information is
not held in the format requested. HM Revenue and Customs’ centrally held data
records the primary reason for the court case. The central data does not
separately identify smuggling cases or use the term ‘in-shore evasion’ when
recording the number of prosecutions or convictions."
More recently, Labour
veteran backbench MP Paul Flynn asked the Chancellor George Osborne, with reference
to paragraph 1.215 of the UK Budget 2016 whether he planned to make additional
resources available to HM Revenue and Customs to implement the comprehensive
package of measures to tackle tax avoidance and evasion, to be told by
Mr Gauke ( 21 March 2016)
“The Government will ensure
that HM Revenue and Customs has the resources it requires to implement the
package of measures announced at Budget 2016 to tackle avoidance and
evasion."
I agree with shadow
Chancellor John McDonnell that HMRC is woefully underfunded to carry out this
important mission, and this reflects the lack of serious intent of ministers
to do anything other than apply another coat of whitewash to the problem,
as I predict the tax evasion summit Mr Cameron has called in May will do.
The Law Firm That Works with
Oligarchs, Money Launderers, and Dictators
Vice News, December 3, 2014
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