Crown Dependency disclosure facilities seen underused
Crown Dependency disclosure facilities set up to offer individuals the opportunity to disclose any overdue payments or irregularities have yielded “surprisingly” low returns for HMRC, according to Pinsent Masons.
The international law firm said just £13.9m ($21.6m, €19.7m) has been collected since the facilities opened in April 2013, with £5.6m coming from the Isle of Man, £5.7m coming from Jersey, and £2.6m coming from Guernsey.
Fiona Fernie, partner and head of tax investigations at international law firm Pinsent Masons, said the reason the yields are much lower than HMRC had hoped for is because the terms offered are much less favourable than those currently available under the Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility (LDF).
Although both facilities offer favourable settlement terms, the LDF offers full immunity from prosecution on all undeclared assets, something which is not guaranteed by the Crown Dependency Facilities.
“It may also simply be a reflection of the fact that the scale of tax evasion across the Crown Dependencies is not actually as extensive as many assume,” added Fernie. “There is likely to be some non-compliance, but more often than not it will be technical in nature – or based on simple mistakes rather than non-legitimate structures.”
Despite this, she said that taxpayers should not be “complacent” as an automatic information exchange agreement co-ordinated by the OECD will mean that from September 2016 HMRC will receive information from financial institutions based in the Crown Dependencies on all UK resident account hers.
“The cross-border exchange of data from September 2016 seems a long way off at the moment- but if people wait until then to identify and disclose any discrepancies it will be too late to use the favourable settlement opportunities which currently exist,” she added.
The Crown Dependency Disclosure Facilities were originally scheduled to close in September 2016 but a recent announcement brought this forward to 31 December, the same date the LDF is now due to close.
