The All-Party Parliamentary Loan Charge and Taxpayer Fairness Group have written to Victoria Atkins, financial secretary to the Treasury, raising concerns over HMRC’s pursuit of individuals prior to 2010 which is in contravention of its failure to abide by its own agency rules. ITEPA 2003 s 44, and previously ICTA 1988 s 134, stipulate that agency workers must be treated as employees for income tax and NIC purposes. But the Group claim that these liabilities are now unfairly and unreasonably transferring liability years later, from the agencies they should have pursued, to the individuals who are now facing retrospective action.
The letter says that HMRC has consistently failed to deal with agency non-compliance in the past where workers have worked through agencies using umbrella companies, and state that if it had policed the sector properly, there would have been no need to legislate for the loan charge and the distress it has caused.
HMRC is currently pursuing individuals by way of s 684 notices, even for those who have open enquiries prior to 9 December 2010, which is the cut off for the loan charge proposed by Sir Amyas Morse and accepted by the government, which the letter says is an ‘unacceptable facet of the whole loan charge scandal’.
The letter has asked for evidence of investigation and action into non-compliance, the number of agencies found to be non-compliant and the amount of tax that should have been paid between 1999 and 2017, and why HMRC is aggressively pursuing people with pre-2010 open enquiries.
The All-Party Parliamentary Loan Charge and Taxpayer Fairness Group have written to Victoria Atkins, financial secretary to the Treasury, raising concerns over HMRC’s pursuit of individuals prior to 2010 which is in contravention of its failure to abide by its own agency rules. ITEPA 2003 s 44, and previously ICTA 1988 s 134, stipulate that agency workers must be treated as employees for income tax and NIC purposes. But the Group claim that these liabilities are now unfairly and unreasonably transferring liability years later, from the agencies they should have pursued, to the individuals who are now facing retrospective action.
The letter says that HMRC has consistently failed to deal with agency non-compliance in the past where workers have worked through agencies using umbrella companies, and state that if it had policed the sector properly, there would have been no need to legislate for the loan charge and the distress it has caused.
HMRC is currently pursuing individuals by way of s 684 notices, even for those who have open enquiries prior to 9 December 2010, which is the cut off for the loan charge proposed by Sir Amyas Morse and accepted by the government, which the letter says is an ‘unacceptable facet of the whole loan charge scandal’.
The letter has asked for evidence of investigation and action into non-compliance, the number of agencies found to be non-compliant and the amount of tax that should have been paid between 1999 and 2017, and why HMRC is aggressively pursuing people with pre-2010 open enquiries.
