We’ve had an R&D enquiry for around 18 months. HMRC owed the client just over £500k. The inspector managing the enquiry has been off for months at a time with no explanation, has provided responses clearly copied and pasted from other enquiries (e.g about the wrong subject), and has taken months to reply to correspondence. This has lead to big cash flow issues for the client. Last week, the enquiry was closed with no amendments.

What are HMRC’s obligations to taxpayers? On the government website, you can see HMRC’s Charter. It states “The HMRC Charter is a legal requirement under the Finance Act 2009″. The Charter includes things like ‘Being responsive’ and ‘Getting things right’.

Great. So HMRC need to ‘be responsive’ and are required to ‘get things right’, just like taxpayers are required to fulfil their filing and payment obligations? Well, no. The legislation (CRCA 2005, s16A) actually states (link in comments):

“The Charter must include standards of behaviour and values to which Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞 when dealing with people in the exercise of their functions.” Aspire is doing some heavy lifting in this section. It is noteworthy that nowhere in TMA 1970 – which largely regulates taxpayer obligations – does the word ‘aspire’ appear. However ‘must’ can be found 85 times.

If HMRC doesn’t meet their obligations in the Charter, they can simply state they ‘aspired’ to do so. But unfortunately, next time you get a late filing penalty, you can’t lodge an appeal stating that you ‘aspired’ to file it on time.