Consultation outcome

Raising standards in the tax advice market

• From: HM Revenue & Customs
• Published: 23 March 2021
• Last updated: 30 November 2021 — See all updates

This consultation has concluded

Read the full outcome

Raising standards in the tax advice market: professional indemnity insurance and defining tax advice - summary of responses (open document format)

ODT, 74.6 KB

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Raising standards in the tax advice market: professional indemnity insurance and defining tax advice - summary of responses

PDF, 389 KB, 27 pages

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Detail of outcome

This consultation has concluded, and we would like to thank those who provided written responses and attended roundtables.

Responses to the consultation indicated that compulsory professional indemnity insurance would not be an effective mechanism to raise standards in the tax advice market, nor would it have a significant impact on consumer protection. Wider difficulties with the market for indemnity insurance highlighted potentially significant feasibility and implementation challenges. The government will therefore not be proceeding with introducing professional indemnity insurance for tax advisers at this time.

Alongside stakeholder feedback, the research report Understanding the characteristics of unaffiliated tax agents informed our conclusion.

The government is committed to raising standards in the tax advice market, and we will conduct a further consultation exploring options to improve the wider regulatory framework around standards in the tax advice market.

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Original consultation

Summary

We welcome views on the proposal that everyone who provides tax advice should hold professional indemnity insurance, as well as views on a definition of tax advice.

This consultation ran from
9:30am on 23 March 2021 to 11:45pm on 15 June 2021

Consultation description

This consultation seeks views on:

• proposals to introduce a requirement for tax advisers to hold professional indemnity insurance, including minimum levels of cover, and how the policy could be enforced and implemented
• a definition of tax advice

This will be of most interest to:

• anyone who provides or receives tax advice, or offers services to third parties to assist compliance with HMRC requirements
• the insurance industry
• providers of tax and accounting software

Documents

Raising standards in the tax advice market: professional indemnity insurance and defining tax advice

PDF, 487 KB, 40 pages

This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

Request an accessible format.

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email different.format@hmrc.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Raising standards in the tax advice market: professional indemnity insurance and defining tax advice (open document format)

ODT, 93.9 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

Published 23 March 2021
Last updated 30 November 2021 + show all updates

1. 30 November 2021

   Published a summary of responses to the consultation.

2. 23 March 2021

   First published.