Practices alerted to new tax campaign

Optical practices have been alerted to a new tax campaign by HM Revenue & Customs targeting undeclared income in the profession.

According to accountancy firm RMT Medical & Healthcare, HMRC’s new Health & Wellbeing Tax Plan was looking for individuals in a range of healthcare roles, including opticians, physiotherapists, chiropractors and chiropodists, to make a voluntary disclosure about any income they have not declared over the past five years.

The company said doing so resulted in substantially lower penalties than would otherwise be the case, at between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of the money due.

Richard Humphreys, healthcare tax expert at RMT, said the new scheme was the latest in a series of focused HMRC campaigns and mirrored a previous initiative targeted at doctors and dentists in 2010.