Under-declared income to Tax department (FOI)

Request 

Several recent court cases have resulted in people being sent to jail for not declaring all their income to Social Security.

For the tax years 2019 and 2020,
A

How many people have under-declared their income to the tax department?
B

What is the total amount undeclared?
C

How many have been prosecuted?

Response 

A

Revenue Jersey does not keep statistics in the exact format requested.  The following numbers of tax returns have been reassessed by Revenue Jersey following various types of interventions during its routine processing activities or through its 2022 Compliance Programme.
 

 (Figures rounded to the nearest 100.)

Assessments can be amended to result in a higher tax liability for a number of reasons, including:

• changes in entitlement to allowances
• removal of disallowed expenses
• upward revisions of estimates by taxpayers
• requests for separate assessment resulting in a 'higher' assessment for one partner
• underdeclared income

It is not possible further to disaggregate these figures to only identify assessments amended due to underdeclared income without exceeding the prescribed limits under Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

B

The time required to calculate the total amount undeclared would exceed 12.5 hours. Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

C

At this date, there have been no criminal prosecutions for either 2019 or 2020. Revenue Jersey endeavours to, where possible, use civil powers rather than criminal sanctions to resolve tax disputes. This is considered good practice for tax administrations in ensuring we change taxpayer behaviour, ensuring the maximum revenue is recovered, and reducing the cost to government from administering the system.

Article applied 
Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive 

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.