HMRC is seeking additional powers to force businesses to provide extra information on their clients and customers, according to a leading accountancy group.
UHY Hacker Young says that currently HMRC largely restricts its requests for information on taxpayers to banks and estate agents, however it now wants the right to be able to routinely ask all companies for data on their trading partners. For example, companies could be asked to provide details on their suppliers so that HMRC can pursue those suppliers that it believes are not paying the right amount of VAT.
Last week, HMRC won a Court order to force over 300 financial institutions to reveal details of customers with offshore accounts. This being just the latest step in a long line of Government initiatives to give HMRC potentially draconian police like powers.
In its new consultation paper, HMRC proposes that banks and other data providers could also be asked to verify the identities of taxpayers, even where they would not collect this data for their own commercial purposes. For example companies could be asked to match national insurance numbers of customers with the date of birth of customers.
Read more: http://www.bytestart.co.uk/content/news/1_12/hmrc-customer-information.shtml
www.ukba.co.uk
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