This Content Was Last Updated on November 5, 2015 by Jessica Garbett

 

This in from Taxwise, who underwrite our Professional Fee Protection Scheme

“With the recent ending of the Property Sales Campaign on 6 September 2013, HMRC are continuing the theme of targeting property owners who have not declared the correct tax by offering a new campaign aimed at undeclared rental income.

“HMRC are looking at landlords who own properties and let them on a variety of different basis aside from long-term lets including holiday lets, student lets and workforce lets.

“The campaign will last an unusually long time of 18 months during which taxpayers can come forward at any point with a disclosure of their undeclared income from rented properties.

“HMRC can rely on a wealth of available information to identify landlords who have either not declared any rents or are not declaring all rents received. This can be from a number of sources including computerised records from other government agencies and local authorities, freely available information from the internet and information gathered from HMRC surveillance or tip-offs from the public. Disgruntled tenants can be a good source of information to HMRC!

“As ever, lower penalties can be negotiated for those who come forward as part of the campaign. Those who do not come forward can expect higher levels of penalties should HMRC later catch up with them and in certain cases criminal prosecutions can also occur.

“HMRC has estimated that 1.5 million landlords underpay tax totalling £500m every year and would therefore view this as a big opportunity to claw some of this tax back, hence the longer than usual period the campaign is open.”