Liberal Democrat Conference: tax cheats to face lie detector test in £1bn clawback - Telegraph

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Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, reaches out to Charles Kennedy, one of his predecessors as leader of the Liberal Democrats. Photo: RII SCHROER Debt collection agencies will work with HM Revenue and Customs to investigate the records of 150,000 people earning more than £150,000 a year — the threshold for the 50 per cent income tax rate. It comes after a pilot amnesty, aimed at the medical profession, led to one doctor handing over £1 million in unpaid taxes, and a dentist owning up to a £300,000 bill. Similar campaigns will be aimed at other high-earning professionals, such as those in the law, architecture and elite sports. After HMRC’s tax collection fiasco, ministers will commission private debt collection companies to claw back £1 billion in unpaid taxes. Companies such as Capita have pioneered the use of lie detector tests to identify potential fraudsters for the Department for Work and Pensions. Sources at HMRC suggested that “voice recognition analysis”, which alerts investigators when a caller claiming benefits sounds nervous, could be used to identify those seeking to mislead tax inspectors. Savers with offshore accounts will also be targeted, with a dedicated team aimed at catching those hiding money in foreign banks. Legally, private companies lack the power Government agents have to take severe enforcement measures, such as raiding properties. But sources said pilot schemes showed that even with the limited powers to write and telephone suspects they were far more efficient and effective at clawing back money than HMRC staff. Companies proved particularly successful at forcing tax avoiders to pay small sums. The £900 million drive against tax avoidance, evasion and fraud was announced on the first full day of the Liberal Democrat Conference. It is seen as a sop to delegates who have called for higher earners to bear more of the pain of the recession. During a question-and-answer session, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and party leader, was accused by one activist of allowing the poor to bear the brunt of the forthcoming programme of spending cuts. In his keynote speech to the conference today, Mr Clegg will try to soothe delegates’ nerves by highlighting the plans on tax evasion, making much of the impact on higher earners. He will say: “People who avoid and evade paying their taxes will no longer get away with it. We will be tough on welfare cheats. But unlike Labour, we’ll be tough on tax cheats too.” HMRC estimates that the annual number of prosecutions will rise fivefold, bringing in £7 billion a year. In his conference speech, Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said: “There are some people who seem to believe that not paying their fair share of tax is a lifestyle choice that is socially acceptable. It is not. “Decisions we make in the spending review will ensure the taxman has the resources to be ruthless with those often wealthy people and businesses who think they can treat paying tax as an optional extra.” Officials calculate that at present £7 billion is lost each year through tax avoidance.

Sure, everyone laughed when the Iraqis bought those magical bomb dowsing kits, but paying Crapita to run their "lie detector" on GPs is basically exactly the same thing.

Why not just go to a medium? It'd be way cheaper and no less accurate.

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Taxman rejects 'lie detector' tech ? The Register

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The government has denied claims it will extend use of telephone "lie detector" tests to the tax system. Proponents of such software - known as voice risk analysis (VRA) - say it is able to calculate the probability someone is lying over the phone by measuring variations in their voice. Scientists charge it is no better at identifying fraud than tossing a coin. The Daily Mail and the Telegraph both carried claims this morning that VRA would be used to identify tax cheats during telephone interviews with HMRC investigators. The reports came ahead of Nick Clegg's speech to the Liberal Democrat party conference, which will call for a crackdown on tax evasion. However, an HMRC spokesman insisted the reports were "nonsense" and that there are no plans to use VRA in the tax system. "HMRC has a responsibility to ensure that everyone pays there fair share of tax, in full and on time," he said. "However, there are currently no plans for the department to use lie detector or voice detection software." The Labour government began trials of a Capita VRA system in the benefits system in 2005, with "varied" results. In Wealden in Sussex, for example, claimants classified as "high risk" by the VRA system were only two per cent more likely to have their benefits changed after further investigation than those classified as "low risk". Nevertheless, earlier this year the Department for Work and Pensions announced the trials would be extended to cover 24 local authorities. Such enthusiasm for the technology also ignored a 2007 study in the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, which said that VRA vendors' claims amounted to "charlatanry". "Our review of scientific studies will show that these machines perform at chance level," the authors, two language science professors, wrote. "No qualified speech scientist believes in this nonsense," they concluded. Nemesysco, the Israeli software company behind Capita's product, threatened to sue the journal for libel, so it withdrew the paper. It is still available online. ®

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