Churchill Knight & Boox clients being investigated as Managed Service Companies

[DealorNoDeal]

You only suspect? It's been that way since IR35 was introduce in 2000.

True but after 22 years of getting the run around, they're probably a bit more testy about it now.

[eek]

That's one of the reasons, judging by some of the comments made here, it's possible some contractors haven't particularly helped themselves. It seems to me that some of those who perhaps arrived on the contracting scene within the last ten years or so haven't understood the potential consequences of things like MSC legislation or how to avoid falling into it. Of course, ignorance of company director's responsibilities and company law is no defence when Hector comes calling.

Those who had a truly vanilla book keeping service from any accountant and can prove it doesn't have much to fear would be my belief. Anyway, we'll know more soon about HMRC tactics.

You are way more optimistic than me. Given the lack of news from elsewhere and the timeline involved (for 2017/18 HMRC has no time left to kick things off) I don't think other firms are going to fall victim but I think most, if not all CK customers are screwed (and in a lot of cases through no fault of their own).

[Fred Bloggs]

You are way more optimistic than me. Given the lack of news from elsewhere and the timeline involved (for 2017/18 HMRC has no time left to kick things off) I don't think other firms are going to fall victim but I think most, if not all CK customers are screwed (and in a lot of cases through no fault of their own).

You might be right. I hope you're not, obviously. We're going to find out, this one is going to run and run. If you're right, the entire contractor accounting industry would be drawn into it and it'd run for years. I struggle to believe it. We'll soon see what the trigger for the action is.

[Jarman]

The fear is getting real now, I cannot handle this waiting game

Can anyone provide a copy of the said letter in private at least please PM - beers later!

[eek]

You might be right. I hope you're not, obviously. We're going to find out, this one is going to run and run. If you're right, the entire contractor accounting industry would be drawn into it and it'd run for years. I struggle to believe it. We'll soon see what the trigger for the action is.

My point is that the rest of the contractor accounting industry don't seem to be involved, if they were given that the deadline to trigger a 2017/18 case is April 5th 2022 they would have heard things by now.

[SwissSaffa]

Boox Accounting is also being investigated. They haven’t even told any of their clients. It took me 6 months to find out from HMRC directly.

[eek]

Boox Accounting is also being investigated. They haven’t even told any of their clients. It took me 6 months to find out from HMRC directly.

I thought they were like Crunch - but they do seem to have made a haste migration from a custom app to Xero (why?) in February. Data from Boox Reviews | Read Customer Service Reviews of www.boox.co.uk (trustpilot.com)

[DealorNoDeal]

I guess if HMRC don't consider that this wheeze nails enough people, or they might lose at a tribunal, they could always roll out the time machine (retrospectively clarifying what constitutes an MSC).

[Clotilde Neves]

I can tell you that the investigation had already started in the end of 2020, as I applied for my company strik-off that was rejected due to an objection from HMRC, that I found out later to be related to this CK MSC investigation. When I called HMRC, they told me not to worry, that the objection was not related to my limited company but to CK and MSC legislation and that CK have been very cooperative and soon everything will be sorted! Honestly, I was very naif thinking everything was ok, but I didn't nothing wrong, so how could I imagine this will end up like this? ?

[Chevalier]

According to CK’s site HMRC have taken the view that clients cannot operate independently from the portal! - Make of that what you will, but If that’s their view then many more products could be labelled as MSCPs.

Even if that’s true, it doesn’t follow that every client is “managed”. The court of appeal judgement in the Costelloe case explores (that often used phrase) the intention of parliament.

My suspicion is that this will eventually evolve into something like the TV presenters / IR35 cases - with each case being decided on its merits.