IHTM29155 - Governance: validating risk assessment

As part of our governance procedures we monitor the risk assessment process to make sure that the accounts submitted are correctly identified for amendment or enquiry, with the minimum of delay. We do this by way of a ‘Mandatory Full Enquiry’ sampling exercise.

We pick a random selection of cases at the point when they are about to be reviewed by the Compliance Risk Assessors. We treat all the selected cases as full enquiry cases, irrespective of the decision taken by the risk assessors. The aim is to find out the additional tax would be yielded from a full investigation of all potential enquiry cases, assuming the resources were available for this.

The risk assessment portfolio holder will provide an annual report to the Compliance Group Manager. In this report they will comment on the results of the risk assessment validation sample. By the end of the year some of the sampled cases will still be under review. So the report will only contain those results that are available. The report will make recommendations on changes to the risk assessment process where areas for improvement are found.