I am a sole practitioner with a business name and address. When signing up for an agent account I had to provide my own UTR and now for any MTD VAT clients HMRC are sending correspondence addressed to me personally to my home address. In addition when any member of the team calls HMRC with regard to an MTD client and give the business address postcode during the security questions they are told it is incorrect. HMRC have said there is not anything they can do about this but I find it ridiculous. If I have to provide copy correspondence to a client I do not want my home address on it. Do any other firms have this problem and have you been able to get round it.
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Call them back and ask them to remove your address or you will report them to the ICO. If you don’t want clients or employees knowing your home address then you are entitled to protect it. I have not come across this, but I work from home and haven’t had any MTD correspondence.
I would also check that your ASA has been correctly set up.
I would also check that your ASA has been correctly set up.
I'd do this first. Before I started throwing my not inconsiderable weight around with ICO threats.
Yes sorry should have said. I am not a sole trader but do you know if your home address is on your ASA?
Yes sorry should have said. I am not a sole trader but do you know if your home address is on your ASA?
Like you, it's the only address I have.
When I signed up to an asa account I linked my utr but during the process it also asked for my organisation address which was my office address, and I've not had any issues with post.
Sounds to me like your personal UTR has triggered the link to your own address when it switched to MTD. Or are your AML details under your personal details?
I got a brilliant result when I switched to MTD. When I first registered as an agent I was a sole trader working from home. A couple of years later I moved into an office and traded under a Ltd Co, but I could not get the VAT bods to switch from my sole trader name and address to the Ltd Co name and address. When it went MTD in April they linked my AML details (which are under the Company) and it all got updated.
You are not alone. Ihad (or possibly still have) the same problem.
I spoke to vat helpline and vat online services, and they both said to notify the CAAT (central agent authorisation team), so I wrote to them.
They wrote back and said the new ASA wasnt part of their brief. I called vat helpline again and they then said hmrc havent developed a way yet for agents addresses to updated on the ASA.
Another problem I had, which you may have too is that when a member of my staff called, because they wern't me, they didn't allow them to talk to hmrc about a client, as my asa had been linked to me personally!!
I think I managed to sort all this out by playing around with names and possibly addresses too inside the agent account by managing staff and changing the name of the asa accoint to my practice name etc. Staff have now successfully dealt with hmrc on behalf of clients for vat.
Since then, things seem to be ok.
I still personally use the old online agent authorisation, where the client gets a code in the post, as I understand the new digital way still has teething issues. I havent tried using the new digital authorisation process via the ASA account yet, maybe that will send emails to clients with my home address shown I dont know!!