Landlords to be responsible for tenants tobacco tax evasion?

I had to check this because I didn't believe it, but yes, it is there. Words fail me!

Also, note Question 23:

Question 23: What sanctions should HMRC apply to landlords or
landowners who have not taken steps to prevent illicit tobacco or other
illicit excise activity on the property or land? For example, should HMRC
impose a financial penalty?

They've already decided we're guilty so they just need to sort out the financial penalty now!

How about MP's being held responsible for the actions of their constituents?

Reply to the comment left by "Barry Fitzpatrick" at "03/03/2017 - 10:23":

Who, the police?

Reply to the comment left by "David Price" at "03/03/2017 - 10:47":

And HMRC can be made responsible for the actions of tax evaders -if it can be proved they didn’t put in the effort to prevent this, by regularly reviewing each individual account. It can come out of their employees' salaries.

I know I'm going against the majority view but I actually think this is a very good idea.

We all know there are too many people evading tobacco duty which is causing severe economic problems for the U.K. I have inside information from a friend who cleans the toilets at the Bank Of England who tells me Mark Carnage reduced the base rate by a quarter percent in August not due to the economic concerns surrounding Brexit but the increase in the deficit from tobacco smuggling. CCN have also reported that Carnage was paid £5billion to speak at the British American Tobacco AGM in September.

I have a friend, who like myself has a few rental properties, and he has offered to me the use of Smokey his cocker spaniel. Rather than go through all the tenant's belongings on my property inspections Smokey will be able to sniff out any tobacco. A simple solution to a simple problem. And I will be doing my bit for my country. Can't see what everybody is complaining about.

Reply to Rosalind. Indeed it is so outlandish that it could be "fake news"
However what is not Fake news is the constant onslaught of taxes and regulations.
Sect 24, Licensing schemes, Increased Court costs for evictions, More hurdles to jump over re issuing sect 21, Quarterly tax returns, New Epc regs and talk of abolishing the CGT allowance for landlords.
What do we do. ?
My advise is simply stall, Ignore question and be absolutely as difficult as possible without breaking the law. This Tory Government has let us down badly but there is no alternative. We should refuse to co operate. The bodies who represent us have been outflanked. Perhaps time to bin them off and stick with this forum. Another alternative is to invest abroad where there is less micromanagement of our business and let the exchequer find other victims to milk.

Yet another piece of total bonkers from this out-of-touch bunch of muppets.
What happened to the principle of "quiet enjoyment" ? - armchair lawyers will have a field day.
However, what I'm really looking forward to is hearing from Gary Dully on this one

Come on Gary - step up to the mark 🙂

I had to slap my face to make sure I wasn't just imagining!
How very stupid and laughable concept! like I said the Govt. is putting us in the front line to deal with tobacco smuggler tenants, we could be at risk from a serious assault if we tried to meddle into our tenants lives! But this failure if tobacco duty evasion is precisely due to their policy failure of duty on tobacco products.

If they hadn't imposed extraordinary high duty on tobacco, or instead lowered the duty below any EU nation, smugglers would reverse the flow of smuggling route whereby Europeans would visit UK to buy tobacco from UK and take it away to European main land, our Govt. would be the one earning more in revenue.

Our chancellors lack common sense, they haven't got any sadly, they keep on putting tobacco and alcohol tax up and up at each budget, making our smoking and drinking population to go abroad and bring back cheaper tobacco and in turn make European nations richer at our expense. They are the ones who encourage smugglers in the end.

Now this was no good way to stop our population of smokers give up, they simply stopped buying tobacco products with UK duty paid, they go abroad and bring back EU duty paid tobacco for personal consumption, as well as the smugglers have a vast market in Britain today. Most EU nationals living in UK bring in a constant flow of tobacco into Britain, I have not seen any EU National smoking UK duty paid cigarettes.
Every EU national I bumped into is seen smoking cigarettes from abroad.

Our free stop smoking program.

If they want, they can crush smugglers overnight by removing entire duty from tobacco products and and reverse the flow, and pocket more revenue from a moderate duty.

But this won't happen we know that, instead we are being asked to become customs officers and policemen without them giving us any power to kick out smuggling tenants!

if you were caught bringing in tobacco at a port, they even confiscate your car, there and then, leaving you stranded at a port for you to make your own way home on foot! Try and do this to a tobacco smuggling tenant, throw him out and change door locks, we could be facing the wrath of the housing law!

The HMRC have probably got nothing better to do, or they are looking for more things to do as they are not busy enough as it is!
I found the article on the following link , seems like its not fake news or an April fools joke at all 🙁
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/sanctions-to-tackle-tobacco-duty-evasion-and-other-excise-duty-evasion

How pathetic. Alison is of course correct that most decent AST's have a clause prohibiting the tenant carrying on illegal activity - I checked the NLA one we use and it has such a clause as you would expect. Much more grief from this government and it will drive me to smoke weed so I can sleep at night !