Revenue renews push to find tax evaders with offshore accounts

Plans for a renewed assault on tax evaders with undeclared offshore accounts are being drawn up by Revenue & Customs, which has called an exploratory meeting with 170 banks, brokers and wealth managers today.

The Revenue wants to widen its net to catch more Britons who have hidden money offshore, in the wake of its recent success in prising open secret accounts held with five high street banks - Barclays, HSBC, HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB.

The first prosecutions resulting from these banks' disclosures are expected next year. The Revenue has already launched investigations after sifting through details of the 400,000 accounts, looking for discrepancies in tax returns.

Advisers said it was inevitable that the Revenue would seek to broaden its crackdown on offshore accounts beyond the high street banks. Andrew Watt of Chiltern, the tax advisers, said: "The feeling was that the real money was going to come from the next tier, including the private banks."

The Revenue expects to glean enough information from the first phase of its crackdown to obtain legal rulings that would force banks to hand over customer details. Additional information will come from 62,000 holders of previously undisclosed offshore accounts, who came forward in response to a partial amnesty offered by the Revenue this summer.

At today's meeting, the banks - along with some other financial institutions that have also been invited - will be asked to fill in questionnaires that will help the Revenue decide how to move forward. It wants to explore the question of how far banks would be able to co-operate with a demand to hand over confidential customer information.

The series of legal rulings last year that forced disclosures by the main high street banks sent shockwaves through the industry, leaving the perception that all banks with offshore branches would be forced to follow suit.

Jeanette Harwood, partner at Walker Morris, the law firm, said: "Across the banking and investment sector, there is a recognition that if the Revenue can use their powers successfully against Barclays, they can use them against everyone else."

But the Revenue needs to find out whether information relating to offshore accounts is available, either because it is on a UK-based server or because UK bank officials are authorised to access information held abroad.

The Revenue has said that it would consider offering another partial amnesty.