The focus of HM Revenue & Customs’ activites has increasingly been on investigations, with a series of task forces launched to tackle tax evasion in specific trade sectors and areas. They have now announced the creation of a task force to investigate tax evasion by the South West holiday trade.

Focusing in specific areas and industries allows the enquiries to make greater use of local knowledge and establish patterns of evasion.

Naturally their interest in the south west is the holiday trade. This is quite a wide business sector. However, our understanding of how these task forces have operated in other parts of the UK would suggest that as well as cash businesses (which we would expect to be targetted) they will be looking at accomodation providers – hotels and bed & breakfasts.

One of the main things they will be looking for is undeclared income, where businesses have made sales for cash and then not included it on either their self-assessment or VAT returns.

If your business is selected for inspection, this doesn’t mean that you’ve dome anything wrong, it just means that your trade is considered more prone to evasion.

Dealing with a tax investigation can be costly and time consuming. That’s why we offer all of our clients tax investigation insurance so they know they won’t incur any additional costs should HMRC select them for investigation.

If you want peace of mind against the risks and costs of tax investigation, then contact us today.