Have your say on HMRC’s compliance activities
As part of the ATT’s trial series of Special Interest Groups looking at areas of tax and issues encountered by members in professional launching a second group that will focus on Tax Disputes and Resolution (TDR) issues. practice, we are
Most members in practice will have clients who, for one reason or another, will have been subject to HMRC’s compliance activities. Compliance activities can range from an ‘aspect’ enquiry into one area of a return to an in-depth enquiry into all areas of a client’s tax affairs. Dealing with and handling both clients and HMRC compliance officers during these processes can be complex and stressful.
Purpose of the discussion group
The ATT is actively involved in discussions with HMRC’s Customer Compliance Group (CCG) (who are responsible for overseeing HMRC’s compliance activities) via the Compliance Reform Forum (CRF) and the Dispute Resolution sub-group (DRSG). These groups meet regularly to discuss compliance issues and provide feedback on activities in this area. We regularly contribute to these meetings by sharing members’ experiences and the obstacles that they face in practice when dealing with HMRC interventions and compliance officers.
Whilst we provide comments on forthcoming campaigns, new legislation, and intervention initiatives, we at the ATT are not at the ‘coalface’ when it comes to dealing with HMRC’s compliance activities – and that is where this group come in. We want to provide a safe space where members can discuss the issues, difficulties, and concerns that they encounter in practice when dealing with compliance cases so that this will inform the feedback we give to CRF and DRSG with a view to helping improve HMRC’s compliance activities going forward.
What, when and where?
We are aiming to hold regular drop-in sessions, run by Steven Pinhey, one of our Technical Officers. These will be informal discussion groups, where members will be able to discuss current TDR issues and highlight any issues they causeeither to members in practice or to their clients. Our Technical team can then give feedback on these issues to HMRC as appropriate. Any such feedback will be suitably anonymized unless an agreement has been reached in advance for specific details to be provided.
The sessions will be up to 45 minutes in length and held via Teams, with invitations sent to a member list but with absolutely no obligation to attend all sessions – members are welcome to drop into any of the sessions.
Interested in signing up?
If you’d like to receive invitations to the TDR discussion groups, please email us once you have read the relevant Terms of Reference. We aim to launch the group in late autumn and would love to see you at one.