HMRC has issued one of its rare updates to the ‘Spotlights’ tax avoidance section of its website. In the preamble introducing the Spotlights section HMRC states that the schemes featured ‘are generally those which HMRC consider have the widest implications and about which there is the greatest need to warn potential users’.
The scheme highlighted on the site is under the banner of Spotlight 12: Taxing the rewards for work carried out for a UK based employer and is, according to the update, a scheme to ‘get around’ the new disguised remuneration rules.
HMRC has stated in the update that in its opinion ‘these arrangements do not succeed in avoiding the tax and NICs due’. HMRC has indicated that it will ‘challenge these arrangements and litigate where necessary to recover unpaid tax and NICs’.
