Online traders and private tutors are next in line for HMRC’s rolling programme of tax crackdowns.

Tax experts started sounding warnings about e-trading last week and HMRC confirmed its latest targets in an official announcement on Monday 13 June. The online marketplaces campaign will focus on people buy and sell goods as a trade or business and who fail to pay the tax owed. HMRC software will trawl the net for traders who may have failed to pay the right tax.

The “web robot” approach drew criticism from privacy campaigners, but people who only sell a few items and who are not traders are unlikely to be liable to tax and will not be targeted by this campaign, HMRC said.

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