Union officials say the high-profile case of £1 million tax-dodging Dundee newsagents shows what may be overlooked when “hundreds of years of experience” goes with the loss of local tax jobs.
130 employees are expected to be affected by the closure of HMRC’s Caledonian House at Greenmarket, scheduled to take place before 2017-18.
It is one of 17 offices to close and be replaced by two new regional centres in Glasgow and Edinburgh by 2019-20 under the UK Government proposals.
Staff will likely have to choose between moving their workplace to the new base in Edinburgh or taking a redundancy package.
However, union officials have warned cases could fall through the cracks when the move goes ahead.
They say the recent case of Mohammed Arshid, 61, and Maqsoodan Arshid, highlights the need for local expertise.
The pair, who were directors of Nethergate Newsagents, had been under-declaring and concealing the business’ liabilities for 17 years.
Stuart Jeffrey, PCS branch secretary of the Dundee HMRC branch, said: “My understanding is that referral to the fraud investigation service came from local knowledge. There is no way of knowing whether or not it would have happened following the removal of local knowledge, but one could suggest that local knowledge won’t be here (when the branch closes).
“Will someone in Glasgow or Edinburgh pick up on that?
“It’s not just local knowledge but vast amounts of experience in Dundee. We have hundreds of years of experience in Dundee. They are replacing these hundreds of years of experience with new recruits to go ahead with these plans.”
Mr Arshid was banned from acting as a director of a company for 11 years, while his wife can’t take a director’s post for two years.
An HMRC spokesman said: “We don’t comment on specific cases for reasons of taxpayer confidentiality.
“We are cutting down on tax avoidance and evasion with modern technology, use of data and collaboration – HMRC’s new regional centre will help us to achieve this, not hinder it. HMRC does not need to physically be in a location to see and stop wrongdoing in the tax system.”
