Credit Cards to identify Tax evaders
OVER the course of this week all of the UK's merchant acquirers, the organizations which process credit card payments, will receive written requests from HM Revenue and Customs to hand over all transaction data for the last four years, and similar annual requests will also be made every year into the future.
The collected information will be integrated with the HMRC's already operating Connect cross-checking system, which analyzes nationally available information to uncover discrepancies between actual spending, transactions, and reported incomes.
The new data gathering powers were granted in the Finance Act 2013.
The HMRC expects to collect an extra GBP 50 million in taxes per year by this route.
We have been doing this since ages, really?