If you work within the legal profession as a solicitor in a partnership or company, or as an individual, this campaign provides an opportunity for you regularise your tax affairs.
To take advantage of this opportunity firms will need to:
- Fill in a notification form by 9 March 2015.
- Fill in a disclosure form and pay what you owe by 9 June 2015.
As with other tax settlement schemes, participation will enable practitioners to settle any outstanding matters on favourable terms: primarily, penalties will be levied at a lower rate.
How the Solicitors’ Tax Campaign works
If you work within the legal profession as a solicitor, you can benefit from the terms offered. Through notifying your intention to disclose by 9 March 2015 and making your disclosure and payment by 9 June 2015 you will have the following guarantees:
- you can tell HMRC how much penalty you believe you should pay, what you pay depends on why you have failed to disclose your income, if you’ve deliberately kept information from HMRC you should pay a higher penalty than if you’ve simply made a mistake
- if you can’t afford to pay what you owe in one lump sum, don’t worry, if your circumstances warrant it, you’ll be able to spread your payments
- if you’ve simply made a careless mistake you only pay for a maximum of 6 years - no matter how many years you’re behind with your tax affairs, however if you don’t come forward and HMRC finds later that you’re behind with your tax, it may be harder to convince HMRC that it was simply a mistake, the law allows HMRC to go back up to 20 years in serious cases or HMRC may carry out a criminal investigation
You may not have to pay any penalty at all but if you do it’s likely to be lower than it would be if HMRC finds out you haven’t paid enough tax.
Under the Solicitors’ Tax Campaign you can make a disclosure:
- about your own tax affairs
- on behalf of someone else (for example, if you’re a personal representative of a deceased person)
- on behalf of a company (if you’re a company director or company secretary)
