Guidance

Visits by agreement or advance notice — CC/FS3

Updated 1 April 2022

Visits — by agreement or with advance notice

This factsheet tells you about visits to your business premises as part of a compliance check.

We only visit if we think it’s necessary. We’ll do this so we can look at your records or business assets and find out more about how your business operates. A visit can help us complete the check more quickly and effectively.

This factsheet is one of a series. For the full list, go to GOV.UK and search ‘HMRC compliance checks factsheets’.

How we arrange a visit

We normally carry out visits with your agreement. We’ll contact you by phone or letter to arrange a date and time for the visit. We’ll usually give you at least 7 days’ notice. If you need to change the appointment, please tell us as soon as possible.

We’ll explain why we want to visit you and why we think a visit is the best way to carry out our check. If you don’t think we should visit, please tell us why. There may be other ways for us to get the information we need.

If we haven’t been able to get your agreement to a visit, we may still need to visit your business premises to carry out an inspection. If we do, we’ll normally give you advance notice. We’ll also give you a ‘notice of inspection’. This is a legal document that allows us to inspect your business premises, assets and statutory records. Statutory records are the records that tax laws say a person must keep.

Sometimes we may carry out an inspection without giving advance notice or seeking agreement. You can find more information about this in factsheet:

• CC/FS4, ‘Unannounced visits for inspections’
• CC/FS5, ‘Unannounced visits for inspections approved by the tribunal’

You can get a copy of these factsheets online. Go to GOV.UK and search ‘CC/FS4’ and ‘CC/FS5’.

About the visit

You don’t need to be present when we visit, but it’s helpful if you are. It allows us to talk to you about your business, how it operates and also discuss the outcome of the visit with you. This can help us complete the check as quickly as possible.

If you can’t be there, please arrange for someone else to give us access to the relevant records or assets. We’ll usually let you know in advance what we need to look at. If we’ve given you a notice of inspection, it will give you details of what we need to inspect and when.

A visit can take anything from a few hours to a few days. This will depend on the size of the business and the complexity of the matters we’re looking at. When we arrange the visit, we’ll let you know how long we expect it to take.

We don’t usually need to talk to people who work for you about our check. However, we may ask to speak to the people who keep your records up to date. For example, payroll and finance records. We may also need to speak to some of the people who work for you if we’re looking at their employment status. If you don’t want them to know about our visit, please tell us.

We may need to take some of your records away to check in our own office. If we do, we’ll explain why and we’ll:

• give you a receipt for your records
• keep them secure
• return them to you as soon as we can

If you need them back sooner, we’ll make copies and give these to you.

If you have any business assets that are kept somewhere other than the premises we’re visiting, we may need to arrange a further visit to see them. For example, if you have more than one premises.

If you run your business from home

We’ll normally only visit you at home if you run your business from there, or if you keep any stock or other assets at home. The visiting officers will only be able to enter those parts of your home which are used for business purposes. This is unless you invite them in or they’re carrying out a valuation.

If we’re checking your Income Tax or Corporation Tax liability we may need to value your private premises if it’s relevant to our check. We may also need to value property in your private premises. This is if we’re checking your liability to:

• Stamp Duty Land Tax
• Stamp Duty Reserve Tax
• Inheritance Tax
• Capital Gains Tax

If you don’t comply with a notice of inspection

If we give you a notice of inspection and you don’t allow us to carry it out, we may ask an independent tribunal to approve the inspection.

If they approve it and you still don’t allow the inspection, we’ll charge you a £300 penalty. We can also charge you further penalties of up to £60 a day until you allow us to carry it out.

If you have a reasonable excuse for not allowing us to carry out a tribunal-approved inspection, we won’t charge you a penalty.

A reasonable excuse is something that stopped you from meeting a tax obligation on time, which you took reasonable care to meet. It might be because of circumstances outside your control or a combination of events. Once the reasonable excuse has ended, you must put things right without any unnecessary delay.

Whether you have a reasonable excuse depends upon the circumstances in which the failure occurred, and your particular circumstances and abilities. This may mean that what’s a reasonable excuse for one person may not be a reasonable excuse for someone else. Examples of reasonable excuse may include when:

• you’ve been seriously ill
• someone close to you has died
• you’ve lost the documents in a fire or flood

The Human Rights Act and your privacy

Article 8 of the Human Rights Act gives you the right to respect for your private and family life, your home and your correspondence. We have the right to carry out an inspection in a reasonable and proportionate way even when it conflicts with your rights. If you think our inspection is not reasonable and proportionate, tell us why.

Concealing, destroying or disposing of documents

If we ask for any documents or information at a visit, we might also give you an ‘information notice’. An information notice is a document that legally requires a person to give us certain information, documents or both.

We may charge you a penalty if you or another person acting on your behalf conceals, destroys, or disposes of any document. This is any document that we’ve:

• asked for in an information notice
• told you we intend to ask for in an information notice

It’s a criminal offence to conceal, destroy or dispose of any document that we’ve:

• asked for in an information notice that has been approved by the tribunal
• told you we intend to ask for in an information notice that has been approved by the tribunal

We may carry out a criminal investigation and consider prosecution if you or someone acting on your behalf commits this offence.

More information online about compliance checks

You can get more information and help online, including:

• links to our video series
• step-by-step guides to our compliance checks

Go to www.gov.uk/hmrc/tax-compliance-support

If you need extra support

If you have any health or personal circumstances that may make it difficult for you to deal with us, please tell the officer who contacted you. They’ll help you in whatever way they can. For more information about this, go to GOV.UK and search ‘get help from HMRC if you need extra support’.

You can also ask someone else to deal with us on your behalf. For example, a professional adviser, friend, or relative. However, we may still need to talk or write to you directly about some things. If we need to write to you, we’ll send a copy of our letter to the person you’ve asked us to deal with. If we need to talk to you, they can be with you when we do, if you prefer.

Additional information

Our privacy notice

Our privacy notice sets out the standards that you can expect from us when we ask for information or hold information about you. Go to GOV.UK and search ‘HMRC Privacy Notice’.

If you’re not happy with our service

Please tell the person or office you’ve been dealing with. They’ll try to put things right. If you still aren’t happy, they’ll tell you how to make a formal complaint.