HMRC’s powers to open an enquiry into a return

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Owner-Managed Businesses

Guidance

Introduction

An important clarification needs to be made to help in the understanding of this note. Whilst the legislation refers to an ‘enquiry’, HMRC now refers to enquiries as ‘compliance checks’.

As this note specifically covers HMRC’s powers, the term enquiry has been used to match up with the language used in the legislation. However, some of the other material referred to, such as factsheets, includes the term compliance checks rather than enquiry.

For the purpose of this note, an enquiry and a compliance check have the same meaning.

An HMRC Officer has the power to either correct a return or open an enquiry, and each of these processes is discussed below.

For more details about compliance checks, see the Types of checks on returns guidance note. For details of what to do when a compliance check is opened, see the Opening letter to a compliance check guidance note and other guidance notes in that subtopic.

Correcting a return

An Officer can, within nine months

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Guy Smith

Senior Manager, Independent Tax

Guy joined Independent Tax in November 2022, returning to his roots handling tax investigations, disclosures and all manner of other HMRC tax disputes, on behalf of the firm’s clients. His remit also includes mentoring junior colleagues and managing the firm’s social media content and marketing output.Guy’s previous roles have included 15 years at HMRC and a similar length of time at Markel Tax, where he managed the team of Senior Tax Consultants, alongside delivering live presentations and webinars to accountants.Guy has been a consultant editor and writer for Tolley Guidance since July 2012 and a member of the ICAS Technical Bulletin editorial board since May 2014.

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