Are tax schemes going to be the subject of the next misselling scandal?

We have all seen the difficulties suffered by celebrities exposed as having participated in aggressive tax schemes. We all stand amazed that people with so much money risk their reputation to avoid paying their due.

In fact, the celebrity pages reveal just the tip of the iceberg.   Thousands upon thousands of respectable businesses and business people have made the same mistake. The good times have passed but HMRC has a long memory and is now forcing huge numbers of those businesses to pay up. It’s clear that the schemes they participated in were found not to be so ingenious after all.

Those business people are often too reticent to complain. They feel responsible for being greedy and in many cases as well they might. As such they are left having paid huge sums to accountants for the schemes themselves and now must pay ‘back tax’ and interest. Sometimes the effects are crippling, and much more expensive than having paid tax at the normal rate in the first place.

But why have so many intelligent and successful people acted in this way?

Well, ORJ has uncovered evidence that accountants sometimes understated the risks of tax schemes, and/or gave clients only hours to consider weighty written advices before proceeding. ORJ has found that accountants sometimes received secret commissions from the sellers of tax schemes and whereas their clients believed the accountants were receiving a modest reward for an introduction, the accountants were, in fact, receiving tens of thousands in “marketing fees.”

To cap it all, conventional ways to mitigate tax (where no commission was payable) were often over looked.

At ORJ we don’t chase ambulances. We are realistic about client’s prospects of redress where they have at least some culpability. Nevertheless, we are convinced many tax schemes were sold wrongly and that much damage was caused.

For a confidential discussion call Patrick Tedstone – Managing Partner ORJ SOLICTORS LLP.   patrick.tedstone@orj.co.uk, or call 01785 223440.