CH177110 - Sanctionable conduct by tax advisers: file access notice: what are relevant documents
A file access notice, see CH177020, enables us to obtain ‘relevant documents’ from tax advisers and third-party document-holders. The purpose of obtaining these documents is to investigate and establish whether or not the tax adviser has engaged in, or is engaging in, sanctionable conduct.
‘Relevant documents’ are the tax adviser’s working papers and any other documents that were received, created, prepared or used by the tax adviser for the purposes of, or in the course of, assisting clients with their tax affairs.
When deciding whether something is a relevant document, it does not matter
- whether the document relates to a current client or a former client
- who owns the papers or other documents, or
- whether the documents exist in paper or electronic form.
In Case A circumstances (see CH177020), we may only request relevant documents which relate to clients of the adviser with respect to whom we have reasonable grounds to suspect the adviser is engaging, or has engaged, in sanctionable conduct. In other words, we cannot make a blanket request for all the tax adviser’s documents relating to all their clients, unless we have reasonable grounds to suspect they have engaged in sanctionable conduct with every client. Even when requesting documents relating to specified clients, we should take care to request only documents which are, or may be, relevant to the suspected sanctionable conduct.
No such restriction applies in Case B circumstances (see CH177020), meaning in those circumstances we could request relevant documents relating to all the adviser’s clients.