HMRC’s business record checks (BRC) programme, after an inauspicious start, is still under consultation. However, despite HMRC withdrawing the pilot project to re-consider its scope and purpose, three significant areas of difficulty remain.
It’s one to watch – at a time when HMRC is promoting the benefits of collaborative working BRC has the potential to impose unreasonable burdens and unjustifiable penalties on small businesses and to damage irreparably the relationship between HMRC and taxpayers and their advisers. With BRC HMRC finds itself at a crossroads: let’s hope it goes in the right direction.
In-year record-keeping penalties – TMA 1970 s 12B: HMRC now believes it can charge penalties in-year if records are not in HMRC’s view ‘adequate’...
