HM Revenue & Customs have today embarked on a campaign to try and recover more than £500 million in unpaid taxes from landlords in the UK. A joint exercise between the government’s Treasury department and HMRC has deduced that around 1.5 million landlords are underpaying their taxes every year. And since the government needs all the money it can claw back into it’s coffers, it has decided to give landlords the benefit of an 18-month amnesty.
Pay Up or Face the Consequences
Most landlords are diligent in paying their taxes, but a small minority still fail to make the right payments to HMRC. The tax office believes that although some underpayments will be as a result of genuine mistakes, the main culprits are landlords with multiple properties or those with student or holiday lets.
Help – I Think I Owe Tax!
It isn’t all doom and gloom if you have inadvertently forgotten to declare income from your rental properties. The whole idea behind an amnesty is that you have 18 months to ‘fess up and come clean to HM Revenue & Customs. If go to them, you can take advantage of a reduced penalty, but if you do nothing and a subsequent investigation finds that you have underpaid your taxes or failed to anything at all, then you will end up facing criminal proceedings, which will inevitably be a lot more costly.
The message from HMRC is pretty clear: “It is better to come to us before we come to you.”
