s660A - More Revenue "Guidance"

[Bradley]

Re:Investigation

I assume the IR can open up an investigation in to your personal tax affairs, and then ask about the company? It seems a bit unfair.
They can, but they must write to the company and open an enquiry under the company tax reference. Until they do, your friend can tell them to get lost.

This is just another example of the Revenue blurring the lines between the individual and the company. The whole approach implies that the Inspector you're dealing with sees your friend as self-employed and is using the company as a tax-efficient "shell".

The reality is, of course, that the contractor is forced by circumstance to form a company and gets the attendant responsibilities as well as the tax advantages.

Most Inspectors don't realise this as they have spent a lifetime in a very large organisation filling out endless forms and have no sympathy, therefore, with those faced with the reality of what happens in the job market today.

[Bradley]

Re:Investigation

I assume the IR can open up an investigation in to your personal tax affairs, and then ask about the company? It seems a bit unfair.

They can, but they must write to the company and open an enquiry under the company tax reference. Until they do, your friend can tell them to get lost.

This is just another example of the Revenue blurring the lines between the individual and the company. The whole approach implies that the Inspector you're dealing with sees your friend as self-employed and is using the company as a tax-efficient "shell".

The reality is, of course, that the contractor is forced by circumstance to form a company and gets the attendant responsibilities as well as the tax advantages.

Most Inspectors don't realise this as they have spent a lifetime in a very large organisation filling out endless forms and have no sympathy, therefore, with those faced with the reality of what happens in the job market today.

[Robot]

Re: Re:Investigation

They can, but they must write to the company and open an enquiry under the company tax reference. Until they do, your friend can tell them to get lost.

Her accountant has now replied with all the relevant information they wanted, not much point in having them snoop at the company's affairs……could find her under IR35, then Section 660 is out the window:lol :lol

The info they want is in the public domain anyway, so she and her accountant thought “better give them what they ask”

[malvolio]

Erm, no...

could find her under IR35, then Section 660 is out the window

They could still do both. Being inside IR35 is not a defence against you having received bounteous dividends in the first place (apart from it being entriely legal, that is, so just why should we have to defend agaisnt it...) It's just that the primary shareholder ends up with the S660 tax bill.

[Bradley]

Re:Info

The info they want is in the public domain anyway, so she and her accountant thought “better give them what they ask”

What sort of accountant volunteers information to the Revenue? If its in the public domain why can't the Revenue by ar**d getting it?

[silicondale]

Quite so, Bradley

An individual shareholder doesn't necessarily have full information on other shareholders' details or their work or other contributions to the business, and the IR are really being naughty asking for it. The simple answer to that question should have been:-

"This is not a question which I, as a shareholder, am in a position to answer. However, I understand from the company secretary that some of the information you require is on record at Companies House, and the remaining information can be obtained from the company's PAYE records at the Inland Revenue".

The deliberate blurring of lines has got to stop - it's as insidious and sinister as re-writing history (with the new version of s660A) and calling us all 'customers' rather than taxpayers.

- SD