A taskforce aimed at tackling tax evasion in the Northern Ireland restaurant trade was launched last month by HMRC. The taskforce is aiming to recover £2.9 million from this initiative.

Taskforces are specialist teams that carry out intensive bursts of activity in specific high-risk trade sectors and locations in the UK. The teams may visit traders to examine their records and carry out other investigations.

These taskforces are a result of the Government's £917 million spending review allocation to tackle tax evasion, avoidance and fraud which began in 2011–12 and which aims to raise an additional £7 billion each year by 2014–15. HMRC has already brought in more than £70 million since the initial taskforces were launched with a further £90 million hoped for in the current tax year.

As part of its strategy, HMRC are using their Connect system, which brings together over 30 different sources of information, and enables them to target specific industry sectors and geographical areas that present the highest risk of tax fraud.

Connect brings together ‘big data’ information on tax payers using a unique fraud detection platform which enables HMRC to uncover hidden relationships between people, organisations and data that they could not previously identify. Combined with powerful analytics, this insight is being used to significantly improve the effectiveness of HMRC campaigns and compliance case work and provides HMRC with a rich resource to support analysis of new threats and to answer strategic questions.