HMRC vexes with record checks attitude

DID YOU SEE that there will be no further checks on accountancy firms going forward under the Business Records Checks scheme?

It seems sensible that HMRC has decided that practices won’t have to go through business record checks when the scheme is re-focused and re-launched.

But the announcement came in an otherwise unsatisfactory response from the taxman to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request.

The main question that went unanswered from Abbey Tax’s FoI was ‘how many accountancy firms have been subject to a business record check?’.

The reason HMRC couldn’t answer? They said it would cost more than £600 to sift through the data. In other words, they calculate that a member of staff at £25 per hour would need to spend more than 3.5 days going through the 2,500 undertaken record checks.

Now, is it just me or does this smack of hypocrisy?

Does HMRC not have a spreadsheet containing details of the checks it undertook, with perhaps a business sector ‘column’??

The mind boggles. Check your own records, before checking others.