Dedicated to the taxpayers of Britain, and the employees of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), who have to endure the monumental shambles that is HMRC.
Having a Solar Protect Tax Investigation Insurance policy at your disposal means that should you be one of the many 1000's of businesses or individuals that are selected by HMRC each year to look into your tax affairs your own accountant (your tax return agent) can get on and defend you robustly.
You have the peace of mind knowing that your accountant's (your tax return agent) fees will be paid by the insurance without any Excess for you to find.
Tax Investigation Insurance is an insurance policy that will fully
reimburse your accountants (your tax return agent) fees up to £100,000
if you are subject to enquiry by or dispute with HMRC.
A Solar Protect policy will enable your Accountant (your tax return agent) to:
Deal with any correspondence from HMRC
Attend any meeting with HMRC
Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal
Having the security of knowing that fees will be met in full will
enable your Accountant (your tax return agent) to defend your position
robustly
Fact: HMRC does not do ‘sweetheart deals’. HMRC makes sure every taxpayer, no matter what their size, pays everything they owe.
Explained
HMRC collects the right
amount of tax due under UK law. We make sure every taxpayer, no matter
what their size, pays everything they owe.
There are no special deals or reduced rates – everyone has to pay
what they owe whether you’re a multinational or someone in Self
Assessment.
Last year (2020 to 2021, HMRC’s
efforts saw the biggest businesses pay an extra £13.2 billion. This is
money that would have gone unpaid without our intervention. Since 2010,
we have brought in £94 billion of additional tax from large businesses
that would otherwise have not reached our schools, hospitals and other
vital public services.
When HMRC and a taxpayer dispute how much tax is due, there are only 2 ways to resolve this:
1) the business agrees to pay the tax, interest and penalties owed
2) the matter is taken to a tribunal or court
When a business agrees to pay the tax due, there is a legal process
to be followed and it is the same for the smallest businesses and for
global enterprises. The vast majority of disputes, large and small, are
settled this way.
HMRC will never accept a
lower payment than we could win in court. We will only accept the full
amount of tax, interest and penalties owed.
If multinational corporations do not agree to settle a dispute with HMRC, we will take this to a tribunal, and we win most cases.
The National Audit Office (NAO), the UK’s Independent public spending watchdog, has full access to HMRC’s papers and has previously scrutinised the way that we resolve tax disputes in large and complex enquiries. In 2012, the NAO appointed a retired High Court Judge to examine our largest settlements and concluded that HMRC had obtained good settlements in all cases.
Fact: HMRC ensures all taxpayers - from the smallest business to the biggest multinational - pays the tax due under UK law.
Explained
At any given time HMRC
has around half of the UK’s 2,000 largest businesses under
investigation. This compares with around one in ten small businesses.
This is because the largest companies often pose the biggest tax
risks. We closely monitor the compliance of large companies with
individual tax inspectors dedicated to scrutinising a single company.
This resource-intensive approach is the most cost-effective way of
ensuring they pay the right amount of tax.
Last year (2020 to 2021), HMRC’s
efforts saw the biggest businesses pay an extra £13.2 billion. This is
money that would have gone unpaid without our intervention.
The UK tax gap for large businesses is among the lowest in the world,
with the latest figures showing this customer segment pays over 97.5%
of theoretical liabilities.
Most large business tax disputes are down to different legal
interpretations around complex transactions. New rules mean businesses
must tell us when their tax arrangements may be subject to legal
challenge further strengthening our ability to ensure big businesses pay
the tax they legally should.
HMRC has successfully tackled coronavirus help scheme fraud and error
Fact: Robust measures were put in place to control error and fraud in
the key coronavirus support schemes. The controls put in place
delivered results.
Explained
Throughout this crisis, the government has acted to protect people’s
jobs and livelihoods while supporting businesses and public services
across the UK. The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme helped to pay the
wages of people in 11.7 million jobs and 2.9 million self-employed
workers have received a Self-Employment Income Support Scheme grant.
From the beginning it was clear the schemes would be targets for fraud and that customers would make mistakes. HMRC was clear on this from the outset, with Permanent Secretary Jim Harra warning MPs of this in 2020. HMRC’s
current estimate for the amount lost to fraud and error in the schemes
during 2020 to 2021 is 8.7% in Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, 2.5% in
Self-Employment Income Support Scheme phases 1 to 3, and 8.5% in the
Eat Out to Help Out scheme. This equates to £5.8 billion, against a
spend of £81.2 billion, and is in line with the original planning
assumptions that informed the design of the schemes.
We designed the schemes to prevent as much fraud as possible before
any payments were made, while still quickly supporting those who needed
it. We designed the schemes to protect public money by:
as far as possible, only making grants for employees and businesses using data held on HMRC systems
preventing ineligible claims from being made and blocking suspicious claims from payment
using HMRC’s extensive knowledge to make an informed assumption of the error and fraud risk
investing in post-payment compliance to identify and recover overpayments
By building automated controls into the digital claim process, we
prevented more than 100,000 ineligible or mistaken claims, and by
carrying our pre-payment checks based on our risk and intelligence
profiles, we blocked more than 29,000 claims and registrations in 2020
to 2021. This has effectively countered the threat from organised crime –
just 0.3% of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme grants paid were
estimated to be lost to organised criminals.
HMRC invested in
improvements to our online services to make it easier for customers to
get it right. Customers returned over £650 million in grants they no
longer required and made repayments of more than £350 million to correct
mistakes without HMRC intervention, largely through our online disclosure facility.
Work to recover fraud and error began almost as soon as the schemes
launched. We recovered £500 million of overpayments in 2020 to 2021. The
government then invested £100 million in a Taxpayer Protection
Taskforce of 1,265 HMRC staff to combat fraud in the schemes. We expect the taskforce to recover £800 million to £1 billion between 2021 and 2023.
HMRC customer service has not been impacted by staff working from home
FACT: HMRC’s staff members have been working effectively from home
since the pandemic began in March 2020 and we are continuing to work
hard to support our customers. In fact, in the first half of 2021 to
2022, our customer service has not only improved, but we have also
reduced the average time taken to answer calls by more than 4 minutes.
Explained
Over the course of the pandemic, we made choices about the work we
prioritised in order to protect our essential services and the
livelihoods of our customer groups who need it the most. We prioritised
the coronavirus support schemes, the UK’s smooth transition from the
European Union and the essential services that keep the tax system
running.
Working from home has not been a factor - HMRC colleagues have been working effectively wherever they are throughout the pandemic.
We are in a year of recovery and are making solid progress. We
stabilised our overall phone service and are now working through the
stocks of post that built up over the past year. We have been able to
move more people back to our core tax activities now the coronavirus
schemes have ended. Through the measures we are putting in place, and
the hard work of our teams, we are on track to be delivering normal
(pre-pandemic) performance on our core service lines by April this year
(2022).
How HMRC contacts its customers
FACT: Sometimes, HMRC contacts its customers via phone, text and
email but we encourage customers to Stop, Challenge, and Protect to
ensure that they do not fall victim to scams that impersonate government
messages.
Explained
In order to reduce the number of people falling victim to scams such
as these, we have issued advice that encourages our customers to Stop,
Challenge, and Protect.
Stop:
take a moment to think before parting with your money or information
if a phone call, text, or email is unexpected, don’t give out
private information or reply, and don’t download attachments or click on
links before checking on GOV.UK that the contact is genuine
do not trust caller ID on phones - numbers can be spoofed
Challenge:
it’s ok to reject, refuse or ignore any requests - only criminals will try to rush or panic you
contact your bank immediately if you think you’ve fallen victim to a scam, and report it to Action Fraud (in Scotland, contact the police on 101)
Criminals use phone calls texts and emails to try and dupe citizens,
often mimicking government messages to make them appear authentic.
Typical scams include:
phone calls threatening arrest if people don’t immediately pay fictitious tax owed
phone calls claiming that the victim’s national insurance number has been used fraudulently
emails or texts offering suspicious tax rebates or bogus coronavirus grants or support
HMRC will never contact
you to ask you to urgently transfer money or give personal information,
nor will we ever ring you out of the blue threatened your arrest. Only
criminals do that and instances of phone calls, texts, or emails like
that should set alarm bells ringing.
This is why our key message is to ask customers to take their time,
remain vigilant, and to use our Stop, Challenge, and Protect advice.
Having a Solar Protect Tax Investigation Insurance policy at your disposal means that should you be one of the many 1000's of businesses or individuals that are selected by HMRC each year to look into your tax affairs your own accountant (your tax return agent) can get on and defend you robustly.
You have the peace of mind knowing that your accountant's (your tax return agent) fees will be paid by the insurance without any Excess for you to find.
Tax Investigation Insurance is an insurance policy that will fully
reimburse your accountants (your tax return agent) fees up to £100,000
if you are subject to enquiry by or dispute with HMRC.
A Solar Protect policy will enable your Accountant (your tax return agent) to:
Deal with any correspondence from HMRC
Attend any meeting with HMRC
Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal
Having the security of knowing that fees will be met in full will
enable your Accountant (your tax return agent) to defend your position
robustly
As a result of Covid continuing to screw things up, HMRC has announced that self assessment
taxpayers will get an extra month to file their tax returns without
incurring a fine. However, interest will still accrue.
While the waiving of penalties means taxpayers won’t
receive a late filing penalty if they file online by 28 February (and
payments by 1 April), HMRC is continuing to encourage agents and
taxpayers to file before the 31 January deadline as interest will still
be payable from 1 February, as usual.
Angela MacDonald, HMRC’s deputy chief executive and second permanent
secretary, said:
“We know the pressures individuals and
businesses are again facing this year, due to the impacts of Covid-19.
Our decision to waive penalties for one month for Self Assessment
taxpayers will give them extra time to meet their obligations without
worrying about receiving a penalty.”
HMRC has estimated that there are still 5.7m tax returns outstanding.
The delay is welcome. However, I would suggest that you don't use this as an excuse to delay sending your paperwork etc to your tax agent. The more time they have to help you, the better their service and advice will be!
Having a Solar Protect Tax Investigation Insurance policy at your disposal means that should you be one of the many 1000's of businesses or individuals that are selected by HMRC each year to look into your tax affairs your own accountant (your tax return agent) can get on and defend you robustly.
You have the peace of mind knowing that your accountant's (your tax return agent) fees will be paid by the insurance without any Excess for you to find.
Tax Investigation Insurance is an insurance policy that will fully
reimburse your accountants (your tax return agent) fees up to £100,000
if you are subject to enquiry by or dispute with HMRC.
A Solar Protect policy will enable your Accountant (your tax return agent) to:
Deal with any correspondence from HMRC
Attend any meeting with HMRC
Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal
Having the security of knowing that fees will be met in full will
enable your Accountant (your tax return agent) to defend your position
robustly
HMRC are pausing webchat for three months, apparently it is inefficient for people with complex tax queries.
HMRC say supporting PAYE customers with coding queries takes 84% longer via webchat than it does over the phone. Payments in Child Benefit and Registrations in VAT both take around 50% longer.
HMRC are pausing most of their webchat for 3 months from today to review their services. They have told us: "Webchat is effective when we use it to answer simple queries... [but] supporting customers with complex queries has proven to be inefficient"
Having a Solar Protect Tax Investigation Insurance policy at your disposal means that should you be one of the many 1000's of businesses or individuals that are selected by HMRC each year to look into your tax affairs your own accountant (your tax return agent) can get on and defend you robustly.
You have the peace of mind knowing that your accountant's (your tax return agent) fees will be paid by the insurance without any Excess for you to find.
Tax Investigation Insurance is an insurance policy that will fully
reimburse your accountants (your tax return agent) fees up to £100,000
if you are subject to enquiry by or dispute with HMRC.
A Solar Protect policy will enable your Accountant (your tax return agent) to:
Deal with any correspondence from HMRC
Attend any meeting with HMRC
Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal
Having the security of knowing that fees will be met in full will
enable your Accountant (your tax return agent) to defend your position
robustly
