Only last week we blogged about HMRC’s efforts to track down internet traders who are evading tax here we focus on social media and how it’s being used to identify tax evaders.
Some 
cyber security firms along with HMRC are getting internet savvy using Facebook, twitter and Instagram to identify potential tax evaders through their children.
Apparently some children of the very wealthy are potentially putting their family assets at risk by flaunting their lavish lifestyles via social media.
The popular internet site Instagram, which encourages the sharing of selfies and posed photos, has become the place for brash, affluent youngsters to boast of their access to wealth through showing off their expensive fashion, jewellery, super cars, yachts and private jets.
What may have been intended as nothing more a bit of youthful bragging has, in some instances, unwittingly exposed their families to scrutiny from fraud investigators and criminals. Even HMRC is starting to look at social media sites to identify potential tax evaders and gather evidence of lavish lifestyles which may not match up with a person’s tax records.
It’s been reported that leading cyber security firms use social media posts as evidence in around 75% of all litigation cases against the mega-rich. Hidden money and assets are being identified through the monitoring of children’s social media posts.
In one debt recovery case where a man claimed to have no items of significant value, one of his children gave the game away by posing on the family’s £12 million super-yacht in the Bahamas. In another a “newly acquired private jet” was identified in a fraud case because one of the two fraudsters had a son who posted a photograph on Instagram of himself and his father standing in front of the aeroplane.
It’s all too easy to get lured into forgetting the global reach of social media even if you’re a social media savvy celebrity. Only last month the rapper 50 Cent was ordered by a US court to explain how he had been able to pose with stacks of $100 bills spelling out the word ‘broke’ after filing for bankruptcy. His answer was to claim the money was fake.
Social media can be a wonderfully entertaining thing but perhaps it’s better to stick to posting videos of cute kittens on Facebook rather than showing off the family’s latest purchase. You never know who’s monitoring those posts, HMRC could be the least of your worries as you could be laid open to extortion, fraud or indeed theft of that new expensive bauble.
