Working Hard On The Next Ebook: Compliance Checks Decoded

When a Self Assessment investigation is opened HMRC issues a document called, “General Information about Complacence Checks” you can see the current version here.

I’ve been going through the document line by line and finding out what it really means and why it’s so badly written, it will then go through a rigorous process of fact checking before it’s published.

The jargon! It’s unbelievable, in fact the whole document is impenetrable to the average reader, here are a few pars from the glossary…

The document is filled with jargon: compliance check (investigation) our service (again that’s the investigation) the customer (that’s you) penalties (fines) the officer (HMRC) extending the scope of our check (digging deeper) quality of disclosure (how much you tell HMRC). It’s misleading to call the document a factsheet as it contains more than just facts and is more than just a sheet!

There are questions without question marks, for example, “What is a compliance check”, “What happens after a compliance check” and “What if you cannot pay what you owe”. Question marks are used for a reason, they help with clarity, don’t they?

Tribunal is often written with a lowercase ‘T’ it should always have and uppercase ‘T’ if it’s referring to the appeals Tribunal as it’s the name of an organisation.

The syntax (word order) is terrible! So we have: “You have the right to complain if you believe that we have not treated you fairly”. Which should read. “If you feel you’ve been treaded unfairly you have the right to complain.

Who writes this stuff?

This book is now finished and is available here.