MTAR20200 - Checks against registration conditions: standards expected of tax advisers
Overview of registration conditions
The registration conditions are designed to ensure that tax adviser businesses (the legal entities required to register), and their relevant individuals, meet the conditions required before being able to interact with HMRC on behalf of their clients.
When applying to register, the business must meet all the following conditions.
The business must not:
- have any relevant outstanding tax returns or unpaid tax, unless the amounts are covered by an agreed Time to Pay arrangement (see MTAR20300)
- be subject to a decision by HMRC refusing to deal with it
- be subject to an anti-avoidance sanction or a stop notice, or any anti-avoidance penalty within the last 12 months
- be disqualified from acting as a director
- have any relevant, unspent convictions for fraud or tax offences (see MTAR20300)
- have an insolvency practitioner acting in relation to it
- be suspended or permanently banned from registering with HMRC
Relevant individuals declared by the business must also meet the same conditions.
Further details on how the conditions apply to relevant individuals, including what checks HMRC carries out, are set out in MTAR20500.
Additionally, the business is required to provide evidence of anti-money laundering supervision as part of registration. Relevant individuals are not required to provide this evidence.
Where the business is a sole trader (an individual carrying on a business in their own name and not through a company), these conditions apply to the individual carrying on the business. The individual must meet all the conditions that apply to both the business and relevant individuals.
Anti-money laundering (AML) supervision
New businesses must factor in the time required to register with a supervisory authority for the purposes of AML supervision (GOV.UK). Having applied for AML supervision will not be accepted and tax adviser registration therefore cannot be completed until this condition is met. Businesses should allow sufficient time to obtain the necessary approval before applying.
If a business operates within a regulated accountancy or legal practice, they may already be supervised for AML by a relevant professional body supervisor. Where this is not the case, tax adviser businesses can become supervised by HMRC (GOV.UK). The process for AML supervision is independent of the tax adviser registration process and timelines must be factored in.
Businesses must ensure that they have the appropriate supervision to provide tax advice services.
Compliance expectations
Registration is how HMRC enforces the registration conditions that tax adviser businesses and relevant individuals must meet.
These conditions are supported by clear expectations about how tax advisers engage with HMRC in the course of their work. The behaviours HMRC expects of tax advisers are set out publicly in the HMRC standard for agents (GOV.UK), which applies to all tax advisers.
To remain registered, the tax adviser business and its relevant individuals must:
- continue to meet HMRC’s registration conditions
- act in a manner consistent with the HMRC standard for agents when dealing with HMRC
Being identified as a relevant individual does not, by itself, create additional job duties or formal decision-making responsibilities.
HMRC does not expect relevant individuals to personally manage every submission, communication or interaction with HMRC. Responsibility for compliance sits with the business as a whole.
Businesses that already hold an agent services account will be contacted by HMRC in April 2027 to provide details of any relevant individuals.