HMRC tax investigation help

An aspect enquiry questions specific entries in a return; a full enquiry opens the whole return. The letter's wording tells you which — and shapes the strategy.

HMRC penalties scale by whether an error was despite reasonable care, careless, or deliberate — the classification is usually the real battlefield.

An instalment arrangement with HMRC for tax you can't pay at once — routinely agreed, and engaging early is what keeps it available.

HMRC's power to assess tax outside normal enquiry windows — 4 years for innocent error, 6 for carelessness, 20 for deliberate behaviour.

Your Unique Taxpayer Reference — the 10-digit number HMRC issues when you register for Self Assessment. Lifelong, and needed for every return.

Advance payments toward next year's tax, due 31 January and 31 July, triggered once your bill passes £1,000. The first year they apply effectively bills 150% at once.

The main Self Assessment return form. Supplementary pages bolt on for employment, self-employment, property, capital gains and foreign income.

The difference between what your payments on account covered and what the year's tax actually was — settled each 31 January.

Four years for innocent errors, six for carelessness, up to twenty for deliberate behaviour. This is why the behaviour classification is the real battlefield of most investigations: it controls both the years in play and the penalty percentages. Representation exists largely to keep honest mistakes classified as what they are.

In civil enquiries you're generally not obliged to attend meetings, and we often handle everything in writing — slower-feeling, safer, fully documented. Where a meeting genuinely helps close the case, we prepare you properly and attend. Nobody should sit alone in a room improvising answers to questions designed by professionals.

Aspect enquiries: often 2–4 months and resolved within our first two fixed stages. Full enquiries: commonly 6–18 months. Our fees are fixed per stage and quoted in advance at each step, which caps the anxiety as well as the cost. The expensive version of an investigation is almost always the unrepresented one.

Usually less bad than it reads. Most checks focus on one aspect — a expenses category, a VAT period, a source of income HMRC can see but your return doesn't show. The response strategy matters enormously: answer exactly what's asked, accurately, with nothing extra. That's the £299 first stage, and many checks end there.

Then a voluntary disclosure — made before HMRC finds it — is dramatically cheaper in penalties, sometimes the difference between 0–30% and up to 100% of the tax. We prepare the numbers, present the disclosure and negotiate the settlement. It's the conversation people put off for years and resolve in weeks.

Preparation and online filing of your full SA100 return, including the supplementary pages your situation needs. If your return is more complex — rental income, capital gains — the packages above show the fixed price, and we confirm it in writing before starting.

Yes. Late returns are common and fixable: we prepare and file the outstanding return quickly, and where there's a reasonable excuse we help you appeal penalties. The sooner it's filed, the sooner the penalties stop growing.

When your taxable turnover in any rolling 12-month period passes £90,000 — a rolling test, not your accounting year, and the most common way businesses get caught out. We monitor it for bookkeeping clients automatically.

It depends on your margins and customers. The flat-rate scheme suits some service businesses; cash accounting helps if customers pay slowly; standard suits most. We'll compare them for your numbers before registering you.