Tax investigations cause unexpected and unwanted bills. With the government promising HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) a further £800m to pursue non-compliance and tax evasion, large numbers of businesses and individuals will be affected by this compliance activity.

Our Tax Investigations Service is designed to provide clients with protection against the representation costs of an enquiry. If selected for an investigation, we will defend you and aim to resolve the matter within the shortest possible timeframe.

The Tax Investigation Service will enable us to:

  • Respond on your behalf
  • Deal with all correspondence from HMRC
  • Prepare and defend your case
  • Negotiate the best possible outcome for you

Typical enquiries can last 19 months and cost over £5,000 of professional fees, simply to prove your finances are correct.

HMRC – the facts

  • HMRC collected £26.6bn from compliance in 2014/15
  • 46% of HMRC staff is now involved in enforcement and compliance work
  • £7.3bn of compliance yield from UK’s 2,000 largest businesses, up from £5.9bn in 2013/14
  • £414m from compliance activity into the UK’s 6,000 wealthiest individuals, up from £268m in 2013/14
  • The Revenue is moving towards developing more specialist compliance teams.

In addition, Connect, HMRC’s award winning technology helps identify risks on tax returns submitted by individuals, partnerships and companies. Connect matches information held by other government agencies, tax evasion reports made by the public, social media profiling and data provided by third parties such as banks and letting agents to name a few. HMRC is exploiting this data further by moving all of this information into a single storage space called the ‘enterprise data hub’, where tax staff will see everything they need to know about an individual in one place.

A thorough defence is crucial to ensure you only pay the right amount of tax. Our Tax Investigations Service ensures you can afford a full, expert defence in the event of a tax enquiry and we strongly recommend that all clients subscribe.

For further information please contact us.