GOV.UK resources for agents
Useful guidance for agents, including manuals and forms, toolkits, webinars and accessing archives.
At the top of every page on GOV.UK you will find a search box icon and a ‘Menu’ dropdown. You can use these - or HMRC’s organisation page - to help you find what you are looking for.
HMRC manuals contain technical guidance for HMRC staff and tax professionals. Their primary purpose is to explain HMRC’s interpretation of relevant legislation, which is the basis on which the department makes decisions.
If you need to search across all manuals, go to Find HMRC manuals where you can:
- filter by HMRC manual, manual pages or both
- sort by A-Z, most viewed, relevance or date updated
For example, using these options, you can view and search the full list of HMRC manuals or manual pages by most recently updated to review the latest changes.
Direct access to HMRC forms and associated guides, notes, helpsheets and supplementary pages.
HMRC designs tax agent toolkits to help you make sure returns are completed correctly and show that you and your client have taken reasonable care.
HMRC creates toolkits with input from agents and their representatives. The content is based on HMRC’s view of how to apply the tax law.
Each toolkit focuses on common errors HMRC comes across. They do not cover all types of errors that can occur in any return.
Updates to toolkits take place each year to reflect any changes coming in and contain:
- a checklist to help identify the key area errors that often occur
- explanatory notes which identify the underlying types of error, how to avoid them and a brief outline of the tax treatment
- links to relevant online guidance
Toolkits are also updated each year for any changes coming from the relevant Finance Act.
A webinar is a live online event that informs you on a specific topic. HMRC record webinars on multiple different subjects.
Learn more about the range of videos and webinars available to you at HMRC email updates, videos and webinars for tax agents and advisers.
HMRC’s organisation page features numerous news stories, latest updates and other useful information. The ‘Documents’ section includes a number of links to help you see all:
All pages on GOV.UK enable you to give feedback.
Giving feedback anonymously helps HMRC improve our content.
At the bottom of every page you will see the question ‘Is this page useful?’. Click ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to tell us what you think. You can also select the ‘Report a problem with this page’ link to leave a feedback comment for that particular page.
HMRC review all of the anonymous feedback comments received on our manuals and over 50% of them result in improvements being made to the guidance.
If you would prefer to submit feedback about content and receive a response, you can use the GOV.UK contact form.
To give feedback on this handbook, you can complete this form.
The National Archives maintain the UK Government National Archives which captures copies of HMRC guidance at regular intervals.
You can find an archived website if you need to see previous versions of HMRC guidance that were held on the websites:
- www.gov.uk
- www.hmrc.gov.uk
- www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk