The move is born out of the need to be able to cope with the anticipated surge in the numbers of investigations following HMRC’s success over the last 18 months in obtaining from five high street banks access to the details of UK residents (individuals and companies) with an address in the UK and an offshore bank account.

In the course of the next few years HMRC will serve similar information notices on all banks trading in the UK, including the branches and subsidiaries of foreign banks. This exercise will yield almost a million pieces of information.

The amnesty, it is hoped, will clear the decks by encouraging evaders to come forward in large numbers and make a clean breast of previous tax irregularities leaving HMRC free in due course to target the hard core who choose not to make a disclosure.

the Offshore Disclosure Facility (ODF), appears to suggest that the benefits are open only to those who hold, or have held, an offshore bank account. However, this would clearly - in due course -have led to a challenge under human rights legislation and the booklet goes on to make it clear that tax evaders who have never held an offshore bank account are entitled to make disclosures on precisely the same basis and to expect to receive the same treatment, as those who do have offshore accounts.

The amnesty process is divided into two distinct phases. Those who wish to avail themselves of the amnesty have until June 22, 2007 simply to do no more than notify HMRC of their intention to make a disclosure of all irregularities, not just those connected with an offshore account.

See all of Andrew Watt’s article in the May issue of BB…

Andrew Watt is director of tax investigations at Chiltern Plc.