Deposits in banks on the Isle of Man have fallen from £56.8bn to £49.9bn since Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) created a unit to focus on tax avoidance via offshore schemes.
In April 2009, HMRC created a 500-strong unit focusing on the tax efficiency methods used by the wealthy, particularly offshore trusts. The Isle of Man's latest banking bulletin shows deposits fell by £6.9bn between March 2009 and March 2011, falling by around £2bn in the last quarter. Deposits into trusts in particular fell from £24.6bn to £20bn in the same two-year period. Over the period, HMRC's attention to offshore tax avoidance schemes has been intensive, with investigations focussing not only on current schemes, but past schemes to which tax can be applied retrospectively. ...
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