Corporate criminal tax offences likely to further increase HMRC's use of dawn raids, says expert

Re: Time to rein in the use of dawn raids

If you read carefully I quite clearly **did not** say that raids couldnt be carried out, or that investigations into the crime of fraud were not supported.

If you even bothered to attempt reading the comment you will in fact see that I said that the problem was **dawn raids** which are often traumatic events for most people & which operate under the poilcy of 'shock&awe' in order to establish a level of control over the suspect that prevents them from thinking or acting in their own defence

This makes sense against those who are under investigation for inherently violent acts or who have commited such in the past. It even makes sense against terrorists who may have explosive devices. It does not make sense against otherwise normal members of society who may have families/children at home if they are unlucky to have their property raided & it doesnt make sense against all the other members of an office to be subject to that kind of violence (are you sure no one in the office has ptsd from any past event before the raid? these dawn raids often can cause ptsd themselves).

There are many options for investigating fraud, using dawn raids is the equivalent of using a nuclear bunkbuster cruise missile to take out a 2man checkpoint on a dirt road. Its brutal and there is no need for the tax office to be weilding such powers. In fact its time that all powers of entry onto private property were fully reveiwed to examine who has rights at the moment & whether they should contine to have them which can be done by having oversight & seeing what if anything is gained by these violent raids

Re: Time to rein in the use of dawn raids

And the Guardian, as the Guardian Media Group (like many other large companies) is well known to use wonderfully creative accounting to evade paying any tax. Just because they write articles attacking these practices doesn't mean they don't do it themselves.

But seriously, there is no difference between turning up unannounced at a civilised hour of the morning to turning up at 5 in the morning unless you have evidence to suggest that people are sitting over the evidence with a can of fuel and a lighter and you desperately need to catch the culprits in bed asleep when you hit the target to prevent destruction of evidence.

Re: Time to rein in the use of dawn raids

All rather prosaic. All the dawn raids I know of were purely because it's the best way to guarantee that the person you're after is home.

Re: Time to rein in the use of dawn raids

"Its time there was proper public oversight (i dont mean by vested-interest parties like courts/judges)"

If you don't trust the legal system to manage the legal process, who do you trust? If judges are corrupt, you have to prove that and replace them, not invent a parallel layer to perform the same function (who's to say your new layer is incorruptible anyway).

Just a quick question for you, how do you get to "don't trust the legal system" from the understandable desire to not have someone or a system that is involved in issuing warrants for these kinds of raids?

We all have vested interests and conflict of interests, should the system and people who issue approvals for these kinds of raids be invovled in the oversight? You clearly think so, but then how do you ensure that transparency and due process is followed without allowing corruption to seep in? How do you stop the 'rubber stamp' syndrome so many judges seem to be afflicted by?

*aside elreg mods, can non badge holders please get some sort of quote box, it would make things a lot easier. Just one style, not a whole bunch of them, it would make responses easier to format

"Well, they're not an employee of ours, so it's not our responsibility."

That's just the point. It isn't their responsibility (arguably) because part of what distinguishes a contractor from an employee is the degree of control that the company can apply. A lot of this has been worked out in terms of H&S law, but if you just apply blanket audit and disclosure rules to both employees and contractors without detailed consideration then you're liable to trip over IR35, and if (hypothetically) you are a specialist contractor working for several competing organisations (e.g. Banks) then there is no way in hell any one of those organisations can be allowed to audit everything you are doing.

Stops a company from saying "Well, they're not an employee of ours, so it's not our responsibility."

Yup. Maybe I should have queried "facilitating". In the instances I gave the stationer, printer and cartridge vendor and Royal Mail could all be argued as facilitating. At the very least there's an opening for a reductio ad absurdum argument in defence.

"Fill up with £80 of fuel at a petrol station and the card machine is on the blink. If the vendor declines to accept an IOU then all your available options become criminal offences."

I don't believe that's true. The offence is to fill up without any means of payment. A valid credit card is a means of payment, and you could not reasonably have known theirs wasn't working. If, on the other hand, they put a big sign on the frontage saying 'cash only' then you would have known. And anyway, they should have a No Means to Pay form that you fill in and you get 24-48 hours (I think it depends on the garage) to come back with payment.

Not really.

If they refuse to accept a compromise payment/settlement, then drive away and come back later.

Driving away without paying is only illegal if you do not intend to pay...