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2 December 2009 HMRC extends offshore tax amnesty

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has extended its offshore tax amnesty in an effort to encourage more people to use the scheme.

The National Disclosure Opportunity (NDO) enables individuals with unpaid taxes linked to offshore accounts or assets to make a complete disclosure at favourable penalty rates.

The deadline for making a notification of the intention to disclose was originally 30 November 2009. However, ‘in the interests of fairness’ the Revenue has now extended this deadline to 4 January 2010.

Under the scheme, account holders who reveal details of their hidden assets will face a penalty charge of 10% of the total tax owed.

Once the NDO ends on 12 March, those taxpayers who have failed to come forward will be ‘vigorously pursued’ by HMRC and will face penalties of between 30% and 100%, together with an increased risk of prosecution.

‘I strongly urge anyone who has been hiding taxable assets offshore to go online and register,’ said Dave Hartnett, HMRC’s Permanent Secretary for Tax.

‘The NDO is voluntary but from the start of the New Year we will begin to investigate those who were eligible to use the NDO but instead buried their heads in the sand. Don’t let that happen to you.’

An estimated 100,000 people have undeclared income hidden abroad, but it is understood that less than 10,000 have taken advantage of the NDO.

The Government hopes its latest tax raid will harvest some much-needed cash, thus helping to reduce public debt.