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Campaigners and MPs are calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the Loan Charge scandal – accusing HMRC of “airbrushing” its approach to a harsh tax crackdown linked to several suicides.

The Loan Charge Action Group (LCAG) has hit out at the Treasury Committee after it wrote to the tax office requesting information on its approach to contractor loan schemes.

These were widely – but wrongly – promoted by employers as HMRC compliant in the early 2000s, and tens of thousands of workers who signed up for them are now facing life-ruining bills for tax on their salaries which their employer should have paid.

Campaigners said the Treasury Committee letter was “little more than a tick box exercise triggered by all of the recent coverage of the Loan Charge” and an inquiry which hears from victims and tax experts is needed.

Steve Packham, spokesperson for the LCAG, told Sky News: “It is frustrating that instead of holding a full select committee inquiry to hear evidence from those facing the Loan Charge and tax sector professionals, the Treasury select committee has merely written to HMRC.

“It seems that this is little more than a tick box exercise triggered by all of the recent coverage of the Loan Charge, allowing HMRC to pedal the usual misleading and partial responses.”

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Loan scheme causing tax turmoil

He accused the committee of a “failure of parliamentary scrutiny in the same way the Post Office were not properly challenged for too long” – in reference to the Horizon IT scandal.

“What is needed is a full select committee inquiry and we urge committee members to announce one and call a variety of witnesses, including those whose lives have been ruined by HMRC’s approach.”

Sky News has previously reported on how tens of thousands of people across the country are facing crippling tax demands from HMRC in a campaign that has been linked to 10 suicides.

What is the Loan Charge?

It all comes back to a 2016 piece of legislation that made individuals responsible for tax which their employers should have paid – the “Loan Charge”.

HMRC has been criticised by MPs and tax experts for not policing the contractor sector at the time of the schemes.

Employers were paid their salaries in loans – and it was widely marketed as HMRC compliant.

Some people facing the Loan Charge, including nurses, cleaners and teachers, have said they had no choice but to be paid this way when they accepted their jobs, while others insist they were trying to do the right thing and streamline their tax affairs following the introduction of complex self-employment rules.

No scheme promoters prosecuted

In his letter to the treasury committee, Jim Harra, the director of HMRC, confirmed that there have been no prosecutions of individuals “for the promotion and/or operation” of what it now calls Disguised Remuneration (DR) schemes – noting that “promotion or operation of mass-marketed tax avoidance schemes is not by itself a criminal offence”.

He said HMRC did not have figures on how many people had joined the schemes “unwittingly” but “the motives of those engaging in tax avoidance schemes do not affect whether tax is due”.

Mr Harra’s letter also revealed that the median settlement for individuals is £19,000, though noted about 40,000 people have still not settled. Approximately 50,000 people are estimated to be affected in total.

He denied accusations the department operates without scrutiny, saying it is “simply not the case that HMRC is unaccountable” and “we act under the general direction of ministers”.

Taking a firm line on recent criticism of “sinister” new tactics, he said: “We do not accept claims that we have been deliberately heavy-handed. We certainly do not intentionally write to taxpayers on specific days, such as their birthday, to increase the impact of our interventions.

“We do not play with people’s emotions. We recognise that there is a human story behind each one of these cases and we take our Charter responsibilities very seriously.”

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HMRC ‘airbrushing the whole mess’

Chair of the Treasury Committee, Conservative MP Harriett Baldwin, said: “Many of my colleagues have raised concerns about the implementation and management of the Loan Charge by HMRC. As a Committee, we believed it was important that we got answers both for our fellow MPs and their constituents.

“I hope the information contained in Mr Harra’s response makes a useful contribution to the public debate.”

However, fellow Conservative MP Greg Smith, co-chair of the Loan Charge APPG, said while it is “welcome” the committee is raising the Loan Charge “as well as writing to HMRC, it needs to also hear from victims and tax professionals who can show that so much of what HMRC says is simply not an accurate picture of the Loan Charge Scandal”.

Greg Smith. Pic: PA
Image:
Greg Smith. Pic: PA


He said: “As usual, HMRC are airbrushing the whole mess and giving the false impression that they acted at the time and warned users, when the reality is that they failed to police the contracting sector and failed to warn contractors and then invented the Loan Charge so they go back retrospectively, but targeting only the workers, not those who operated the schemes.

“With 10 confirmed suicides and 13 attempted suicides, as well as countless lives already ruined, the Treasury Select Committee should also seek evidence from other parties, to get a more realistic picture of the whole Loan Charge Scandal.”

He warned: “Without a change of approach from HMRC, we are very fearful of the consequences and we hope the Select Committee will join us in properly holding HMRC to account, before more lives are ruined”.

Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK.

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‘My lawyers are ready’ for questions about corruption claims, ex-minister tells Sky News

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'My lawyers are ready' for questions about corruption claims, ex-minister tells Sky News

Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.

Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.

The London MP resigned as a Treasury minister in January after being named in several corruption inquiries in Bangladesh.

In her first public comments since leaving government, Ms Siddiq said “there’s been allegations for months on end and no one has contacted me”.

Last month, the interim leader of Bangladesh told Sky News the MP had “wealth left behind” in the country “and should be made responsible”.

Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.

The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.

More on Bangladesh

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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.

In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.

Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.

The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.

Ms Hasina was forced to flee the country in August following weeks of deadly protests.

She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.

Electrocuted on their genitals and mouths sewn up: Inside Bangladesh’s ‘death squad’ jails

Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.

She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.

Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.

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Former New York governor advised OKX over $505M federal probe: Report

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Former New York governor advised OKX over 5M federal probe: Report

Former New York governor advised OKX over 5M federal probe: Report

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.

Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.

“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.

The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.

The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.

A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.

“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,”  Azzopardi added.

OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.

Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: Bloomberg

Cuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.

Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.

Former New York governor advised OKX over $505M federal probe: Report

Source: Linda Lacewell

Related: New York bill aims to protect crypto investors from memecoin rug pulls

After the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.

“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,” OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.

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Trump imposes 10% tariff on all countries, reciprocal levies on trading partners

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Trump imposes 10% tariff on all countries, reciprocal levies on trading partners

Trump imposes 10% tariff on all countries, reciprocal levies on trading partners

United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.

The reciprocal levies on will be approximately half of what trading partners charge for US imports, Trump said. For example, China currently has a tariff of 67% on US imports, so US reciprocal tariffs on Chinese goods will be 34%. Trump also announced a standard 25% tariff on all automobile imports.

Trump told the media that tariffs would return the country to economic prosperity seen in previous centuries:

“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. The United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting.”

“Then, in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying,” Trump said.

Economy, US Government, United States, Donald Trump

Full breakdown of reciprocal tariffs by country. Source: Cointelegraph

Trump presented the tariffs through the lens of economic protectionism and hinted at returning to the economic policies of the 19th century by using them to replace the income tax.

Related: Bitcoin rally to $88.5K obliterates bears as spot volumes soar — Will a tariff war stop the party?

Trump proposes eliminating federal income tax and replacing it with tariff revenue

Trump proposed the idea of abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and funding the federal government exclusively through trade tariffs while still on the campaign trail in October 2024.

According to accounting automation company Dancing Numbers, Trump’s plan could save each American taxpayer $134,809-$325,561 in taxes throughout their lives.

Economy, US Government, United States, Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump addresses the media about reciprocal trade tariffs at the April 2 press event. Source: Fox 4 Dallas

The higher range of the tax savings estimate will only occur if other wage-based taxes are eliminated at the state and municipal levels.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who assumed office in February, also voiced support for replacing the IRS with the “External Revenue Service.”

Lutnick said that the US government cannot balance a budget yet consistently demands more from its citizens every year. Tariffs will also protect American workers and strengthen the US economy, he said.

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