The UK’s tax authorities are to target secondary ticketing operators and sellers over concerns that their accounts do not reflect volume of sales.
HMRC has acted on comments made during a hearing on the sector held earlier this month by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
In a statement reported by the BBC news website, HMRC suggested the sector is considered to be at “high risk of tax evasion and fraud”.
Culture Secretary Karen Bradley promised to raise concerns with HMRC after ticketing expert Reg Walker, operations director of the Iridium Consultancy, told the committee that while the sector is believed to be worth £1.2bn ($1.5bn/€1.4bn), “we can only find a turnover of around £200m on published accounts”.
HMRC said: "HMRC will always act where we believe individuals and businesses are not declaring their income correctly or paying the tax that they owe.
"Our compliance teams target specific sectors and locations where there is evidence of high risk of tax evasion and fraud and we use intelligence from various sources.
"In all cases, we look at compliance against a variety of taxes including VAT, self-assessment and corporation tax."
Following Walker’s comments, the Culture Committee said it would be “urging [the Secretary of State] to study the submitted evidence regarding the under-reporting of income by known touts, and to raise this with HMRC as an area which warrants their investigation”.
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