investigation amnesty period

[chavvy]

Hi,
At which point can you throw away all your records regarding your contracts and expenses as you can no longer be investigated by the IR for this period? I heard it was 5 years.

[centurian]

Hi,
At which point can you throw away all your records regarding your contracts and expenses as you can no longer be investigated by the IR for this period? I heard it was 5 years.

For Self Asessment, it is 5 years from the deadline for reporting that's years return, which is 10 months after the end of the tax year.

So a receipt from 7th April 2003, needs to be kept until Feb 2010 - almost 7 years (it's in the 03/04 tax year, SA deadline 31/01/2005, 5 years from that 31/01/2010)

Not sure how it works for company accounts, but expenses are strictly a personal expense anyway, so you will need to keep them for 6-7 years.

[xoggoth]

Thought I saw something about changes to make tax claims either way a consistent 4 years.

[xoggoth]

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/about/new-compliance-checks.htm

Thought I'd seen it somewhere.

The legislation also makes some changes to the way HMRC must carry out compliance checks, including

a new four-year time limit for assessments and claims - a reduction from six years for Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax and Corporation Tax and an increase from three years for VAT

But be aware that despite that heading these may not be in effect on April 2009 and they can still assert carelessness or fraud and use longer limits. Naturally they can screw up as much as they like and it's still only 4 years for you to reclaim overpaid tax.

http://www.lynamtax.co.uk/news/new-t...09/2009/03/03/

[Bengal]

HMRC can go back 20 years under "discovery" rules, I think. This is only likley to happen if they discover understatements in the year that they are looking at.

[gadgetman]

What about if you've closed your Ltd (after HMRC agreement)?

[NotAllThere]

HMRC can go back 20 years under "discovery" rules, I think. This is only likley to happen if they discover understatements in the year that they are looking at.

That's true. But you don't have to keep records going back 20 years.