Further to Keith M Gordon approach to the question on Service Companies:
So, we are back to where we were last year. Assuming that HMRC will honour the contents of the letter they sent me in every other taxpayer's case (and it would seem most unreasonable if they didn't), we can be assured that non-completion of the service company question will not give rise to an automatic £300 penalty.
For the reasons set out in my article in Taxation, 18 September 2008, I remain firmly of the view that the question is not a lawful tax return question and need not be answered. Unless someone persuades me otherwise, I do not propose to answer it (and will state the fact on the return itself).
Should HMRC deem my return incomplete and seek to penalise me, I will be prepared to defend myself.
I will naturally keep everyone informed of developments. In the meantime, thank you to everyone who expressed their support. Common sense has prevailed and we didn't need to recruit Joanna Lumley.
How are others dealing with this, as it would appear again to be another mess just like the P35 question?
Replies (7)
Please login or register to join the discussion.
It is people like you ...
... who betray the mass passive resistance of the rest of us who answer the question and thus, overload the Revenue with too much information which they do not have the resources to pursue.
Oooh! Touchy!
Jason
The bulk of your post was not a question. It was a personal statement of what you were doing and are going to do in future. I am not sure why you think we needed to know that.
At the very end, you asked what others were doing and I gave you an answer. If you object to my terminology, let me rephrase it:
I am completing the service company question on tax returns. I suspect that most others are doing likewise, if only because the question is asked.
However, neither of us will know unless there are a lot more responses to your personal statement.
And I think you are wrong that the "very" reason why people have stopped posting on this site is the tone of some of the answers. It may deter some people from asking a question for the first time, but you are not in that category. If people have stopped posting, I suspect it is mainly because of the unfamiliarity (or some might say, user unfriendliness) of the new layout.
OP
Hi
The original poster isn't giving a synopsis of what he is doing, it is a quote from the barrister who has been pursuing the legals of the question with HMRC directly. As it stands, it seems that he has managed to get HMRC to agree that there are no fines for non-completion of the question. I would therefore suggest that it is quite an important part of the post.
I personally would be interested to hear what others are doing because I was unaware that the majority of people were answering the question.
Thanks
Baggy
I, for one, thank you, Jason, for your blog
I have been pondering this question from my solitary desk. It goes against the grain to answer it if there are patently no IR35 implications linked to the income declared within the rest of the Return. It is my own held belief (although I am not aware these are shared by others) that the Revenue are on a fishing trip, not only for potentional IR35's, but, I feel, more importantly to see just how many small businesses are exercising the low salary/dividend income policy. Once in possession of those facts they will use this to influence policy changes so that such dividends are taxed as salaries.
Can't find the update link now, but ...
Keith Gordon originally stirred the pot with this article
http://www.taxation.co.uk/taxation/articles/2008/09/17/6871/answer
Since then he has written some updates per his list of articles shown here:
http://www.atlastaxchambers.com/barristers/barrister.php?member=keith_m_gordon&pageno=4
Unfortunately the references to the subsequent relevant articles are not in the form of hyperlinks and I don't know now how to retrieve them. But following them as they progressed I recall that he effectively got tacit admission from HMRC that the question was ultra vires and without statutory foundation.
With kind regards
Clint Westwood