The amount of tax owed by deliberate defaults hit £20.6m for the last quarter, although this was down by nearly a third since the March figure of £27.9m

HMRC has issued penalties for unpaid tax totalling £12.5m in an effort to force the tax evaders to settle their bills. This compared to penalties of £18.4m for the last quarter. Here is a rundown of some of the more substantial examples of tax evasion and the lengths HMRC is going to in a bid to recover the millions in evaded tax.

Top of the list this month is buy-to-let landlord and crypto investor, Erica Claire Stanford, who racked up a staggering £4.04m in unpaid tax from 2015 to 2020, and now has been hammered with a £2.82m fine.

On a smaller scale a buy-to-let property owner avoided paying £152,819 and faces a penalty of over £80,000 while a labourer spent three years avoiding paying tax, with an outstanding bill of £738,687, equivalent to nearly £250,000 in annual earnings, which never crossed HMRC’s radar until a fine of £517,000 was issued in bid to recover the unpaid tax.

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