AIBU to report possible tax evasion?

[Taxevasionpredicament]

Name changed for this to keep it seperate to my other posting...

I know someone who is a social media influencer, and has a very vocal stance on how pitiful the self empoyed support in the uk has been. Which was one of her justifactions as to why she is currently in Dubai 'working'

She has posted about this, stating that included in her support calculation was the full 3 years of self employment, the first year of which she was working part time as a PT while studying at university.

However i know this to be totally untrue, as I was a PT client of hers, for at least 2 years, which ended about 3 years ago. So i know that shes been self employed a lot longer than 3 years, and that 3 years ago, she was doing a lot more than 1 or 2 days a week. For the period i was with her, she was seeing around 6 clients a day, mon-fri, at £35 an hour. As well as having an online training subscription service. Also for the whole time that i was involved she was never a uni student, and had dropped out a while before i met her. So the uni grant she says she was receiving 3 years ago would also have been fraudulent i imagine.

AIBU to want to report her? I agree that the self employed support has been lacking, but it grates a bit to have her complaining about how hard she has it, while sunning herself in Dubai, with a large amount of sponsorships, and a very profitable onlyfans account.

I suspect that for the length of time i was a client, most if not all that money was not being declared. All clients either paid cash or transferred money into her personal account so no obvious business paper trail.

But not sure whether to just stay out of it and let her be one of the millions that gets away with this sort of thing. AIBU to want to report?

I wouldnt say im overly invested in it, nothing ive stated took me any sort of time researching, its just facts that i know that goes against her very regular social media posts. Everytime something pops up, im reminded that its not true, and then carry on scrolling. I suppose the general unfairness of profiting off a lie annoys me, but its not like im losing any sleep over ut 😂 Just generally pondering whether i have any sort of responsibility to report or not, given i know its not true.

But i suppose i should just leave her to it.

And yes sorry for confusion, PT stands for personal trainer, not part time, person involved is in the fitness industry 😂

If you've got evidence you could report it for investigation. Worst case scenario nothing happens.

I have evidence that disproves what shes stating on social media, but i suppose what shes claiming on social media might not be true. Maybe she did declare all her tax, got a massive support package, and decided she wanted a holiday to Dubai and knew saying she was using this money to pay for a holiday might not have gone down so well as a desperate sob story.

And i suppose the hard evidence i have is only that i was a client, so might not disprove an argument that she only had a couple of clients at the time. I can only prove she had one client (me), not that she worked full time.

Why not just call her out on social media then “well this isn’t true....” laughing face etc.

@BakedTattie

Why not just call her out on social media then “well this isn’t true....” laughing face etc.

You've said yourself you stopped seeing her 3 years ago or so. The governments support for self employed people is based on an average of their earnings for the last 3 years only. So what she earned 3+ years ago is entirely irrelevant... so no, based on what you've said here you don't have evidence as you say you haven't been her client for over 3 years. She may well have gone part time & started studying after you last saw her.

What she stated was that the first of the three years of her tax calculation years, she was still at uni and PTing part time. I know this isnt true as i was still a client during this year.

Ive kept in touch with her since i stopped seeing her as a client so know she didnt reduce her workload in the last few years.

It implies that she has understated her earnings for the year in question, which has reduced the support awarded. Which she feels hard done by about.

Depending how much she earned initially she didn’t have to declare any income. Also the government are only interested in the last 3 years so who cares what she did or didn’t do before.

Not too sure what your problem is

@Chadcharming

I mean you could if you really wanted to but having worked in the financial sector, our firm has reported probably over 100 people for this kind of thing over many years to HMRC, and not one has ever been investigated.

HMRC aren’t interested, they only want to go after large companies where it’s extremely easy to get money from them for no work.

It would be a complete waste of time.

Actually HMRC aren't that interested in large companies either. They are mainly interested in small outfits/individuals with plenty to lose who they can hound and saddle with big legal costs. See all the presenters they've been after recently?

My problem isnt totally with what she may or may not have claimed in pandemic support. My point is that if her declared income for the first of the last 3 years was lower than i strongly suspect it actually was, it stands to reason that the years before that were the same.

So yes, irrelevant in connection with covid support, but relevent in connection with possible tax evasion. Im sure if HMRC decided to investigate someone they would look beyond the covid support window.

HMRC aren’t interested, they only want to go after large companies where it’s extremely easy to get money from them for no work.

Like Amazon ? or Google ? or Facebook ?

bollocks they do.

The smaller the fish the harder HRMC bite. A friend of mine had them chasing him for 5 years costing £10,000 in accountancy charges which was never recovered before they admitted they'd got it wrong.

Personally I wouldn't think twice if I suspected someone was diddling their taxes. See it, say it, sorted.

But you can’t know exactly what she earned and what expenses she claimed in any given year. She might have earned a lot but then put a car/equipment etc against tax.

HMRC are unlikely to go after a media influencer for 'earnings' more than three years old, especially if she was registered as a student at that time. The cost v benefits of the case would pretty much prevent them even opening a file.

You are far too invested in this...what has she done to you?

Gosh, if this is how determined you are with someone you barely know, I dread to imagine how you’d be if someone actually wronged you!

Bitter

If she's paid her taxes in the last 3 years then she's entitled to claim the SEISS. The less tax she's paid the less grant she'll receive. It's that simple. So if she's been earning X but declaring Y she'll only be able to claim for that.

You are totally unreasonable. I think you should mind your own business and mute this person or unfollow / block them. Why do you care ? I can't believe what a busy body you are to go checking stuff and looking at dates. How sad and jealous are you ? How bad must your life be that you want to tear this person down ? You should be ashamed of yourself quite frankly. Karma is a bitch and will bite you.

Take the high road ! Always !

I'm actually shocked that there are people like you in this world who would care about something as minor as this situation which you actually know nothing about. Are you a sociopath or something ? Out for some kind of revenge ? I would hate to think what you do to people who have actually harmed you in any way. You are dangerous. Definitely not normal.

My problem isnt totally with what she may or may not have claimed in pandemic support. My point is that if her declared income for the first of the last 3 years was lower than i strongly suspect it actually was, it stands to reason that the years before that were the same.

OMG. Imagine being THIS bored. All over a situation you know hee haw about.

So how long has your DP been subscribing to her onlyfans?

Haha no dp doesnt subscribe to her onlyfans.

And i havent 'checked dates' or anything. I know my own timeline of when i was a client and i know what she posted on social media the other day. No checking of anything has gone on. Im sure most people would be able to confidently say what they were doing 3 years ago?

If you are that concerned, just post a reply on her SM thread that the grants are based on declared income only?

I think you’re looking at the wrong dates. Don’t self-employed taxes need to be done in the Jan of the following year.
So she would have just submitted 19/20 taxes so those weren’t taken into account for support.

The last 3 years of taxes for self-employed were:
18/19, 17/18, and 16/17. So that’s 4 years ago, not 3. If she had an extension last year then might even have taken 15/16 into account.

How do you know she wasn’t self-employed when you were seeing her?

Also just because someone charges $35 an hour doesn’t mean that’s what they actually get! Eg: she saw a client for 1 hour and charged £35, but she also had to set up, clean up, write some notes, prepare for the next, - that’s already 1.5 hours, so actually £23ish an hour. When self employed as a PT I expect there are also insurances, own equipment, or rental costs to where she was working etc to pay out. I think she’s under changing to be honest!!

I think you are fully invested in something you actually can’t be 100% sure about unless you’ve seen her bank account and spoken to the Uni.

Are you working out the years properly anyway? If HMRC were to now look at the last three years, they'd look at 2019-20, 2018-19, 2017-18.

When was it you knew her well?

I imagine she's just bigging herself up on social media, which isn't a crime that HMRC would be interested in.

If anyone was paying cash, there's absolutely no evidence of that by now.

You might as well just forget all about this.

Yes i agree theres probably no point in pursuing, but wanted to claridy that the dates i have are worked out correctly. I may have been a bit more vague here or stated the wrong date or year, but i know my experience is different to her claim on sm.

To the PP who said i cant be 100% without seeing her bank account or uni, well yes, thats the point of reporting suspicions surely? Hmrc dont want the public to all start doing their own financial investigations, but they do ask the public to report suspicions

Think its interesting that the poll is a lot more balanced than the comments, but i suppose the people frothing at the mouth and calling me dangerous are more invested the the ones that think im being fair enough.

But yes it does not seem worth the hassle of reporting.