I wasn’t going to comment on progress around the so-called offshore tax amnesty but it seems my earlier prediction there will be a last minute dash to HMRC’s confessional is likely to come true. According to the Sunday Times, Dave Hartnett, HMRC director general indicated:
…the Revenue had so far been approached by 34,000 people and 4,000 have confirmed they would be disclosing hidden assets and paying tax they had dodged. He was expecting a flood of disclosures in the final week of the amnesty this month.
HMRC is milking the fear factor for all its worth and the Sunday Times is gobbling it up. But in all the brouhaha, the UK high street banks look set to come in for special treatment. Sadly, Mike ‘Rent-a-Quote’ Warburton, of Grant Thornton seems to be using the situation to deflect attention away from the profession:
“People were told by bank staff that this was a great way of reducing tax, they didn’t realise they should actually be paying tax,†he said. “There appears to be a question as to whether aggressive salesmen at the banks were pushing these schemes.â€
Not so fast Mike. In my experience, folk who go to banks for investment advice are rarely high wealth clients who DON’T check in with their accountants. There’s nearly always a tax angle. And while the banks pushed all sorts of schemes in the 80s and 90s, I cannot recall a single client who didn’t at least ask for an opinion on what they were being offered. In many cases, the advice was fiscally sound, but on others, not so smart.
Dave Hartnett picks up the banking theme:
Hartnett echoed these concerns. “One of the things I am concerned about is the extent to which some of the marketing has . . . misled them,†he said.
“We will look at how offshore products have been marketed because part of our job is to try to make sure people understand their tax obligations and meet them, so if they are being misled we want to understand that. It would be an FSA matter and we have a statutory [obligation] to pass information to the FSA.â€
Yes Dave – and what are you going to do about the professionals who were complicit in these arrangements? Again from experience, firms that do naughties usually find themselves under the spotlight. Having opened the door on one lot, surely you’re not going to let other culprits get away free and clear. Are you? Or am I stealing your next headline? 
And while we’re at it, I wonder whether anyone from the ethics committees of the major trade organisations: ICAEW and ACCA, are doing anything to review member’s activities? When the dust settles, I’d suggest both bodies could do themselves and the remainder of the profession a significant service by making it clear that this kind of thing is the 21st century’s unacceptable face of capitalism. Public naming, shaming, substantial fines and exclusion should be the clear message. A failure to take positive action would be yet another nail in the coffin of a profession that is already tainted with the whiff of corruption.
