A minor provision in this year's Finance Act enables HMRC to check with merchant service providers (i.e. the people who enable you to receive card payments) to see how much they've passed on to you.
They're not allowed to see the detail of which individual customers have paid you, and how much they've paid. They'll just be able to find out monthly totals. They'll then be taking those figures away and tracing them back to your accounts to see if it's consistent with the income you've been reporting to them and paying tax on, and with VAT you've been handing over to them.
Of course, most businesses will be reporting with complete honesty the amounts customers are paying them via card (and all other payment methods too). But no doubt there will be some who will be caught out by this check - HMRC know that and so have sought the powers. Hopefully it'll contribute, even in a tiny way, to levelling the playing field between honest businesses and dishonest ones.
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