Tax investigation finalised with HMRC but there's a twist

[ny_rk]

That's a good idea. Will call them Monday. Thank you

[wamstax]

I would watch HMRC's attack on EBT's with great care.

In fact I would closely examine the whole basis for any discovery assessment - especially if you laid out in your returns at the time (as most people did where they took advice from avoidance pedlars) the fact that your income was paid by a salary and also that you received loans.

If all that sort of information was laid out in the white box then clearly HMRC would potentially be on a sticky wicket for discovery.

Also don't forget that if HMRC are to make a discovery assessment - and you do not need to give them self incriminating inforamtion to guide their assessment - they must make it to the best of their judgement and ability. If they just look out the window and add a couple (or more) of 000s to the bus number this would not be best judgement and their assessment would be invalid. Similarly there is no reason why you should not ask HMRC for how they arrived at the sum assessed.

Ideally you would be best engaging with a tax adviser that is capable in seeign through HMRC's weaknesses and not one that just says appeal and postpone as matters are going towards appeal. How would you like to be the test case?

As for the comments in correspondence I coul believe that somebody could just possibly been foolish enough to say that no enquiries would be made into 2008-09 and in that event if you have the letter (and those terms exactly) then I would make a formal complaint as clearly they closed the previous enquiry and extracted a contract from you under false pretences.

Presumably this situation has arisen because you partook of what HMRC consider to be an abusive (their words not mine) avoidance scheme whereby your income earned from and end user was channelled through your purported employer by means of a basic salary and a much larger (tax free) loan. Of course the old addage may well ultimately be true in most of these cases - namely if it sounds too good to be true it probably is - however that is no reason that you should use every tool in your arsenal to defeat their belated attack (and possibly turnabout after gettign you to sign up to a contract). A contract is only enforceable if both parties have a common understanding as to what is the nature of the contract and terms (including any stances taken by either side in the negotiations to the signing of the contract).