THE CRACKDOWN on private tutors by HM Revenue & Customs has to be welcomed.

Evasion should not be tolerated and it is a pragmatic approach to target professions and industries where first, the opportunities for evasion are greater, and secondly, where information is more available.

The Tax Health Plan has done well, but few would argue that the Plumbers Tax Safe Plan has been a success, with only £328,000 collected through voluntary disclosures.

But there is a trend developing in the taxman's - wrongly-named, but for want of a better word - amnesties. The first few campaigns, such as the offshore disclosure facility and the THP, were based on hard information that had fallen into HMRC's hands. As such, HMRC held all the cards and could play any hand they wanted, knowing they had the information to catch evaders.

But the two most recent campaigns - plumbers and tutors - are examples of HMRC pro-actively finding the information for itself. In the case of plumbers, it looked into Gas Safe registered plumbers; for tutors, as revealed by Accountancy Age, it is issuing Section 16 notices. The tutors campaign differs from the plumbers campaign in that it is not even working in conjunction with the professional bodies. By issuing the notices, it is burdening colleges.

So what should be taken from this new aggressive approach? HMRC is being smarter in its campaigns and is showing more confidence. This suggests that there will be new initiatives announced at a more alarming pace as the requirement for easy information is no longer there.

Perhaps more importantly, the carrot is becoming far less important than the stick. Because there seems to be less information readily available, HMRC is perhaps not as expectant that people will be frightened enough to come forward, evidenced by the £328,000 garnered from voluntary disclosures from plumbers. Therefore, the "amnesty period" is short and the publicity is not as persuasive.

The £1m single payout made by a doctor will not be repeated. But the arrest of five professionals is likely to be far more common.

AFTER NUMEROUS false dawns, the agreement with Switzerland was finally announced yesterday. And, credit where it's due, HMRC permanent secretary Dave Hartnett pulled off an excellent deal. The figures being talked about are around £5bn a year, but that might even be conservative.

Here are the facts: UK taxpayers with accounts in Switzerland will pay 19% or 34% of the value of their account unless they choose to disclose, in which case they will pay their liabilities plus penalties plus interest; the UK can request the details of accounts of 500 people a year who they suspect of tax evasion, whether the individuals consent or not; the UK will receive withholding tax on all future incomes close to the top rates of tax; and Switzerland will pay around £384m for the privilege of this.

Whichever way this is looked at, the UK is the winner in this.

Of course, the pragmatic approach to tax evasion is being criticised in some quarters. It's true that evasion should never be rewarded, but make no mistake - evaders will not be happy with this deal.

Switzerland is entering to these deals to stop itself becoming a financial pariah state. But to expect it to give up its privacy laws would be too much. This is the country's biggest industry and it would almost take a referendum to do so. True, the US is taking a different tack by introducing legislation to force its citizens to disclose overseas taxes, but this is a gamble and is costly.

The provision to name 500 accounts a year, as well as bringing in revenue, will be a strong deterrent for tax evaders. This allows Switzerland to maintain that it has secrecy with the footnote that it is not a fuill cloak for tax fraud.

The Swiss Bankers Association has already welcomed the agreement and the Liechtenstein Disclosure Facility has shown the benefits of the full co-operation of the overseas territory.

Talking of Liechtenstein, we can expect to see a rise in the number of people moving their accounts to the country, with the full tax liabilities, interest and 10% penalty it will bring to the UK Exchequer. More importantly, Liechtenstein banks will now begin phase two of the LDF agreement: to force UK citizens to disclose their details to HMRC.
It's been a long time anticipated, but HMRC can rightly be proud of this agreement.

SOME OF HMRC'S recent initiatives have been given the misnomer "tax amnesty". It must be said that HMRC themselves have not done this, while this magazine has.

The latest figures released today suggest that HMRC's amnesty carrot is unappealing and probably in the value range. The menacing stick, however, looks like it will do the damage.

Indicative of this is the amount of money they brought in from the first stage of their plumbers campaign through voluntary disclosures - £328,756, from around 600 people. To put this in context, some of the 600 investigations that have been launched by the taxman are worth up to £150,000 each.

Despite HMRC taking stick for the low uptake of voluntary disclosures, this should not be a massive surprise. A long-time tax evader is unlikely to be seduced by the 20% penalty on offer - and nor would HMRC expect them to be. The voluntary stage - the so-called amnesty - was a warning shot, a chance for HMRC to say "we warned you". Of course, it also yields an easy £328,000, but this will not help it raise the extra £7bn a year that ministers have called for.

The second stage of actively pursuing offenders is the real revenue generator and it is at this point that the taxman's results should be judged. The 600 investigations are a good start. Now, it only needs to yield some actual revenue.

Switzerland represents one of the biggest nuts to crack in terms of banking secrecy but the coalition government has pulled off something of a coup with its information exchange deal.