investigation worries

[fionapops]

hello there i have moved a couple of times in recent years and have lost all my accounts paper work i have an accountant so i know he has some records but what will happen if i get investigated and have no bank statments, recieps, or invoices wil i just get fined i only have records starting april 09 i am a self inployed decorator hope u can help cos its keeping me up at night and also do they have the power to send u to prison over tax issues

[scottie2]

hi there-can you clarify for what periods you have submitted tax returns and for which periods you have not-that would help us in answering your question. Furthermore, if you have filed tax returns, why do you fear being enquired into? Do you have something to disclose? If you have filed tax returns and are upto date, the earliest year HMRC could look at in detail would be 2009 and they would ask to see all of the available records for this year. They would only seek to recover additional taxes if there was ample evidence that you had not disclosed all of your income or you had claimed for expenses that are not allowable for tax purposes. They would not necessarily need to examine the records for earlier years, however much will depend on your exact circumstances. Generally, custodial sentences are reserved for the most serious cases of tax evasion so you should have nothing to fear, but more information is needed before further advice can be given. Hope this helps manoj.anand@wlhtax.co.uk

[robbob]

Hello fiona

Providing the info you submitted to the accountants was in reasonable shape then i would expect that your accountant may/probably will be able to resolve this with the tax office without any severe adverse consequences, although this will probably depend on their working papers / the nature of your business and the quality of your records you supplied to them and the quality of records for other periods that are available.

All i would say is that you should ensure that your currrent year/future records are "more than sufficient" to keep the taxman happy - so the taxman will not get the impression that you are trying to pull a fast one and he is less likely to want to go back to this earlier year by looking at your later records.

It is probably worth ringing your current accountant to ask if there is any info you should be keeping that you may not be.
E.g. Cash account for business
Itemised list of all withdrawls from business.

This is certainly not something that i think you need to lose sleep over IMHO and the taxman understands that records do go missing sometimes - its the case that they have been perfect in this regard themselves.

[wamstax]

Go on sleep at nights!!!

Records do go missing from time to time and as long as the taxman doesn't think that you have got rid of the records intentionally to cover up things you should not have any problems. You can always volunteer to obtain duplicate bank statements etc from the bank and if the worst came to pass your accountant should be bale to resolve matters with HMRC.

Your problem is not one that would normally even go anywhere near prosecution let alone a custodial sentence. Just do as we say and start sleeping at nights

[graham174]

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