by Mike Lewis | Aug 29, 2025
The UK is in a fiscal tight spot. The Chancellor has promised to raise an additional £7.5 billion over the next four years by boosting HMRC compliance efforts. The Autumn Budget is likely to see more measures intended to make this number go up: perhaps extra...
by Mike Lewis | Aug 7, 2025
Summary: UK ministers last month hailed five of the UK’s Overseas Territories for putting in place searchable registers to reveal who really owns companies in their territory – a key tool against tax evasion, money laundering and other illicit financial activities....
by Chris White | Jul 18, 2025
New powers against ‘enablers’ – those who design and enable aggressive tax avoidance and evasion – are back on the table once again. But new figures show that existing powers are still not being used. A report published by the Public Accounts Committee...
by Chris White | Jul 4, 2025
After years of attempts at reform, offshore havens still offer secrecy for those determined to hide money and evade tax. In a week when five of the UK’s Overseas Territories have ignored yet another deadline for functioning ‘beneficial ownership’...
by Mike Lewis | Jun 19, 2025
Summary: Quietly buried in HMRC spreadsheets released today is the news that the UK Tax Gap – the gap between tax due and tax collected – seems consistently to be billions of pounds bigger than HMRC previously estimated. New evidence suggests that the...
by Mike Lewis | May 23, 2025
Previously we found that HMRC is hardly using powers to investigate, penalise and publicise tax advisers who enable tax abuse. Here we look at why these powers aren’t being used: a barrage of legal roadblocks; and holding back on naming and shaming. *** When tax...
