I have spent the past 3 weeks collating 60 separate documents for HMRC in respect of an enquiry into a SA return.
HMRC have been really difficult about the timing of this and very reluctantly have agreed to give me only an extra week.
Would anything prevent me from Password protecting each document with a different password and supplying the passwords to HMRC in a photo, to ensure that they have to re-key the password each time?
Along the lines of........
DocumentPassword Control List
4.1a 39Gq&kfo^6!f*WG!r0AqI
4.1b vlYBxBtgVwrI8V^Z*dC!T
4.1c QS$5&K&TRAq%%FZiIFpfS
4.1d M%&Z$VE^sN%c7QM^bWabA
Childish I know, but we have been put to a considerable inconvenience and all the documents are in order.
Replies (6)
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As you say, it is a childish thing to do and not the act of a serious professional. If I were an HMRC officer on the receiving end of such a tactic, I'd be damned sure to go through everything with a fine tooth comb and ask every awkward follow-up question I can. They can make life harder for you than you ever can for them.
What sort of documents are they asking for that it has taken you three weeks to compile? When you asked for additional time to compile them, how did you phrase the request? Could you have helped create this problem by taking an unnecessarily antagonistic approach from the start?
If you have enough time on your hands, and really want to suffer (or inflict upon your client base) the consequences of your pettiness, then crack on.
This petty idea will just waste lots of your own time generating all these codes and having to type each code in twice whilst saving each document.
It will result in nothing positive for your client, which after all should be your objective.
You can try but you're (or your client) the one that's going to end paying the price. You won't win any battles with HMRC. Just suck it up.