Will HMRC think that your tax management is well balanced?

Large, medium or small, all companies can benefit from considering how HMRC view the effectiveness of their tax management systems, governance and approach.

In my opinion, the HMRC Business Risk Review Plus initiative is not just a tool for consideration by large companies to manage their HMRC risk status.

It is a clear definition of how HMRC sees best practice and responsible tax payer behaviours.

This is extremely useful guidance for the Senior Finance Manager and Finance Director in every UK company and business.

The SAO regime was introduced for Large companies, because the penalties and interest that HMRC can apply have a comparatively small effect on the top management of a large entity.

In smaller entities there is no mandated regime, as Senior Management are likely to be directly effected by the penalties on any significant failing.

The penalties are the same for all companies, although HMRC is likely to be more lenient on their view of reasonable care based on size and complexity.

If you don't have the benefit of a CCM, you can see this guidance as a direct line into HMRC's think tank.

It may help you check that you have the governance and systems in place to support paying the right tax at the right time. At the end of the day, that's all that HMRC wants.

The Business Risk Review guidance is quite lengthy. The links below send you direct to the guidance on the indicators; both the overview and the highly detailed list of what HMRC considers to be low risk behaviour.

I hope sharing this will be helpful. If you would like any support, please don't hesitate to contact me at rebecca.johnson@spursupportservices.co.uk

Tax Risk Management - Have you found the right balance?

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Business risk review indicators overview: https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/tax-compliance-risk-management/tcrm3341

Systems and delivery detail:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/gds/tcrm/attachments/tcrm3342_systems_delivery_risks.pdf

Internal governance indicators:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/gds/tcrm/attachments/tcrm3343_internal_governance.pdf

Approach to tax compliance indicators:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/gds/tcrm/attachments/tcrm3344__approach_tax_compliance.pdf

Penalty summary:

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/compliance-handbook/ch82120

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