”Internet spiders” tracing tax cheaters.

WebJournal on International Taxation in Sweden (WITS) no 3/2012 (March)
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Overseas property tax cheats who appear to be living beyond their means are the target of a team of 200 Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) investigators. HMRC is warning wealthy investors with land and property abroad that they are combing their tax returns to make sure they have declared income and proceeds of sale.
A task force of accountants, investigators and finance professionals is collecting information from government agencies, the internet and foreign tax authorities and have harnessed sophisticated risk assessment techniques to pinpoint high net worth individuals not paying enough income tax and capital gains tax. Data-mining is the main weapon against tax evaders with internet spiders - computer programs that crawl the web looking for information in the same way search engines scan web sites. The spiders can sift vast amounts of information - like tracing a property owner from foreign tax authority data to match with information about property to let on holiday web sites.
A similar hunt for landlords and property owners cheating tax is concentrating on the Land Registry,housing benefit payments, the electoral roll and tax returns.Forex and commodity traders are also under investigation by the tax man.
Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, David Gauke, said: “The government is committed to tackling tax evasion and avoidance across all areas of the economy. That is why we allocated £917m to HMRC to reduce the tax gap over the next four years. The new team is part of that investment. With HMRC’s increased capability and expertise, and its increasing success in tackling evasion both at home and offshore, the message is clear: there is no hiding place for tax cheats.”

Stockholm 12 March 2012
peter@sundgren.net