The number of tax investigations being undertaken by HMRC is significantly increasing year on year. These investigations are becoming incredibly detailed, with HMRC even using social media to help with identifying tax discrepancies.
In this blog, the team at Clayton & Brewill explains why tax investigations protection is so important for businesses.
What is a HMRC tax investigation?
Every year there is a gap between the tax that HMRC estimates it should collect from individuals and what it actually collects. HMRC will undertake random tax investigations on both individuals and businesses to ensure that they are paying the right amount of tax.
There doesn’t need to be any specific event to prompt this enquiry, however it could be due to various factors, such as:
- Late filing of tax returns
- Incorrect figures on tax returns
- Inconsistency in accounting and tax figures
- Someone alerting HMRC to unusual activity in your accounts
Tax investigations can look into every aspect of your business and personal tax situation and can be disruptive, complex and invasive. HMRC is using every avenue available to them to identify tax discrepancies – even social media sites. It can also access a business’s credit card and debit card sales records going back four years – and use specialist software to compare them to the company’s VAT returns and income tax returns to spot any irregularities.
How can having tax investigation protection help?
Tax investigations can be extremely expensive. Having protection in place will help to give you peace of mind that you are fully protected against any professional costs associated with an enquiry.
It will also ensure that you and your accountants are able to defend your enquiry fully and you will not have to worry about the time and money it will take to defend the investigation.
What Clayton & Brewill offers
At Clayton & Brewill, we provide a comprehensive service to protect against any potential fees that may occur from professional representation in the event of a HMRC tax investigation. When you sign up to our tax investigation protection service, we will:
- Provide you with full representation and challenge HMRC’s arguments, should an investigation be brought against you
- Ensure you have a robust defence based on the facts, not your ability to afford a defence
- Put you on equal footing with HMRC from the start
- Protect your work by achieving a fair enquiry outcome, without you facing an unwanted accountancy bill
If you would like to find out more about our tax investigation protection, please do not hesitate to get in touch with a member of the team today.
