HMRC is setting up ten new ‘task forces’ to focus on restaurants in London, then in Scotland and the North West. The other teams will target evasion ‘in specific high risk trade sectors and locations across the UK’ as part of HMRC effort to raise an additional £7bn in revenue each year by 2014/15. Further teams are to be launched in 2012/13, so it seems that these will be ongoing projects.
Without further details, this appears to be an extension of HMRC’s use of cross-disciplinary teams to target high-risk businesses. As such, if a business is visited by one of these teams, it should be treated as a very serious and advice sought from tax investigation experts at the earliest opportunity