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HMRC Watch: tales of woe flood in

27th Jan 2016
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ICPA is a professional organisation for accountants in practice.

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A few months ago, when we started HMRC Watch as a direct response to the neutering of the Working Together initiative, I never expected to get the amount of emails and letters that we have.

We try to upload the emails to our site on a monthly basis, so if you want to see if anyone else has the same problem as you go to the ICPA site at www.icpa.org.uk and look up HMRC Watch. If you have something that you want to report, send it in to [email protected].

Below is case we put up a couple of months ago and I’ve chosen it because its shows that HMRC cannot liaise sufficiently well to report whether the findings of a visit resulted in a debt due to or due by HMRC.

Who do you think has to do all the sorting out?

Yes, us accountants, and what is the helpful answer provided?

Read for yourself… Do we owe VAT or are we owed VAT? They don’t know...

Following a VAT Compliance check it was agreed that my client was owed money by HMRC. The client then received a demand for a spurious amount from a VAT team in London and a demand from the debt management agency for the amount HMRC owed them. Following calls to confirm the amount owed to the client, chase payment and query the two letters, the HMRC operative had no idea why this had happened and admitted that because the VAT team was split into many small teams throughout the country, no one knew what the other teams were doing! This is complete madness!” All I can say is “complete madness” sounds about right to me.

• Tony Margaritelli, Chair, ICPA

This article is taken from “Accounting Practice” the ICPA quarterly magazine. Dedicated to supporting and promoting the needs of the general practitioner. You can find us at www.icpa.org.uk or email [email protected] or by phone on 0800-074-2896.

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