Not what the doctor ordered
1 Feb 10
A new approach to collecting unpaid tax should be applied consistently. That’s the warning from ICAS to HM Revenue & Customs after two campaigns by HMRC appeared to take a very different approach to the medical profession and fish and chip shops
The Tax Health Plan will mean HMRC targeting doctors’ tax affairs using new information powers.
Unpaid tax will be collected as well as interest and a fixed 10 per cent penalty. This new approach of targeting particular employment sectors is expected to be used widely in the future.
However, an HMRC campaign has also been put in place to target the owners of fish and chip shops, with no restrictions on the penalties for non-compliance, a situation at odds with the fixed 10 per cent penalty in the case of doctors.
Bob Crawford, convener of the ICAS Tax Committee, said, “It appears that our chippies are taking a battering compared to our doctors, and there’s no clear reason why.”