Guidance

Compliance checks: information notices — enablers of defeated tax avoidance

Updated 23 June 2023

This factsheet tells you about the information notices we may give when we’re checking whether you or another person may have to pay a penalty for enabling abusive tax arrangements. We call these penalties ‘enabler penalties’.

To find out more about other types of information notices, please read factsheet CC/FS2, ‘Information notices’. To find out more about enabler penalties, please read factsheet CC/FS43, ‘Penalties for enablers of defeated tax avoidance’. It explains what we mean by ‘enabler’, ‘abusive’ and ‘tax arrangements’. Go to www.gov.uk and search ‘CC/FS2’ or ‘CC/FS43’.

If you need help

If you have any health or personal circumstances that may make it difficult for you to deal with us, please tell the officer that’s contacted you. We’ll help you in whatever way we can. For more details, go to www.gov.uk and search ‘get help from HMRC if you need extra support’.

You can also ask someone else to deal with us on your behalf, for example, a professional adviser, friend or relative. We may however still need to talk or write to you directly about some things. If we need to write to you, we’ll send a copy of our letter to the person you’ve asked us to deal with. If we need to talk to you, they can be with you when we do, if you prefer.

What an information notice is

An information notice is a document we may give to a person when we’re checking:

• their own or another person’s tax position
• whether they or another person may be liable to pay a penalty for enabling abusive tax arrangements

Once we give an information notice to a person, they are legally required to give us the information and/or documents that the notice asks for. If they do not do this, we may charge them penalties. We explain more about this below.

When we give an information notice

If we’re checking whether you or another person may have to pay enabler penalties, we’ll normally ask you to give us the information and/or documents we need. If you do not do this, we may give you an information notice.

In some circumstances, we may ask the independent tribunal that deals with tax to approve the issue of an information notice. We’ll tell you if the notice we give you has been approved by the tribunal.

Sometimes we may need to give you an information notice without asking for the information or documents first.

What the information notice will tell you

The information notice will tell you:

• what information and/or documents you need to give us
• how and when to give us what we need
• about any penalties we may charge you if you do not give us the information and/or documents by the deadline
• about your appeal rights

What we can ask for in an information notice

We can ask for any information and/or documents if we believe we need them for our check and it’s reasonable to ask for them.

What we cannot ask for in an information notice

We cannot use an information notice to ask you for information and/or documents:

• that you do not have, and that you cannot get (or get copies of) from whoever has them
• that relate to the tax position of a person who died more than 4 years before we issue the notice
• that have been created as part of the preparation for a tax appeal
• that are exclusively about a person’s physical, mental, spiritual, or personal welfare
• that are privileged communications between lawyers and clients, and are about getting or giving legal advice
• if you’re an auditor or journalist and the information or documents have been created for the purposes of your profession
• if you’re the subject of journalistic material and the information or documents have been created by a journalist for the purposes of their profession

The rules about what information and documents fall into these categories can be complicated. If you think that anything we have asked for may fall into these categories, please talk to the officer who sent you the notice. You can find more information about privileged communications in the section ‘Legal professional privilege’ below.

What to do if you disagree with an information notice

If we send you an information notice, it will tell you what you can appeal against, and how to appeal. You may be able to appeal against:

• the notice itself
• anything we have asked for in the notice, except information or documents that form part of your statutory records (statutory records are the records that tax laws say a person must keep)

You can appeal by writing to the officer who sent you the notice telling them why you think their decision is wrong. They’ll try and come to an agreement with you.

If you cannot come to an agreement you can (do either of the following):

• ask for the matter to be reviewed by an impartial officer who works for HMRC’s Solicitor’s Office and Legal Services (SOLS) team and who specialises in review work
• take your appeal to an independent tribunal

You cannot appeal against an information notice that has been approved by an independent tribunal.

If you need more time to give us what we’ve asked for, you should contact the officer that sent you the information notice.

Asking another person for information or documents about you

If you cannot or do not give us what we’ve asked for, we may need to get it from another person. If this is the case, we’ll normally ask you for permission before we contact them.

If we ask another person for information, we will not reveal any more about you than is necessary to get the information we need. If we ask for your permission and you do not want to give it, you do not have to. However, we’ll ask you to tell us why. If you do not give permission and we still need to get the information or documents, we’ll normally ask an independent tribunal for approval to give an information notice.

Sometimes we may need to give another person an information notice without asking you for the information or documents first.

Penalties for not complying with an information notice

If you do not comply with the information notice by giving us everything the notice asks for by the deadline, we may charge you a £300 penalty. We may also charge you a £300 penalty if you, or another person acting on your behalf, conceals, destroys, or disposes of any document that we have:

• asked for in an information notice
• told you that we intend to ask for in an information notice

If you need more time to give us what we’ve asked for, please contact the officer who sent the information notice. If you have still not complied with the notice by the time we’ve charged you the £300 penalty, we may then charge you daily penalties. These may be up to £60 a day for each day that you do not comply.

When we will not charge you a penalty for not complying

We will not charge you a penalty if we agree that you have a reasonable excuse for not complying with the information notice. Instead we’ll ask you to give us the information and/or documents (or replacement documents) by an agreed date.

A reasonable excuse is something that stopped you meeting a tax obligation that you took reasonable care to meet. It might be due to circumstances outside your control or a combination of events. Once the reasonable excuse has ended, you must have put things right without delay. For examples of what does and does not count as a reasonable excuse, go to www.gov.uk and search ‘disagree with a tax decision’. Then select ‘reasonable excuses’.

If you think you have a reasonable excuse, please tell us.

Tribunal approved notices — concealing, destroying, or otherwise disposing of documents

It’s a criminal offence to conceal, destroy, or otherwise dispose of any document that we:

• have asked for in an information notice that has been approved by the tribunal
• told you that we intend to ask for in an information notice that has been approved by the tribunal

We may carry out a criminal investigation with a view to prosecution if you or someone acting on your behalf commits this offence.

Penalties for giving inaccurate information or documents

If you carelessly or deliberately give us inaccurate information or produce a document containing an inaccuracy, we may charge you a penalty of up to £3,000 for each inaccuracy.

We will not charge you a penalty if you tell us about the inaccuracy at the time you give us the information or produce the document. If you later find an inaccuracy, you must tell us without delay.

What happens if you give us information that you know to be untrue

We may carry out a criminal investigation with a view to prosecution if you:

• give us information that you know to be untrue, whether verbally or in a document
• dishonestly misrepresent your liability to tax or claim payments that you’re not entitled to

Legal professional privilege

We cannot insist that you give us information or documents that are covered by legal professional privilege, and which you can refuse to give us because of that privilege. However, if you choose to give them to us, this may help us with our check. If you give them to us, the right for them to stay private would be lost.

Legal professional privilege is an area of the law that only applies in limited circumstances. If you refuse to give us any of the information or documents we’re asking you for because of legal professional privilege, we may challenge that it applies if we do not agree.

You may decide not to give us certain information or documents because you believe they are covered by legal professional privilege. If you do, you’ll need to let us have a list of everything you’re not giving to us. The list should describe each piece of information or document that you’re not giving to us and say why you’re not giving it. You do not have to describe the information or document if describing it would mean revealing private information covered by the privilege.

Declarations by a lawyer

You may decide not to give us certain information or documents because you believe they’re covered by legal professional privilege. If any of the information or documents show that you’re not liable to enabler penalties, a lawyer may be able to make a written declaration stating that this is the case. The lawyer would do this under paragraph 44 of Schedule 16 to the Finance (No.2) Act 2017.

You can find more information about these declarations in our technical guidance. Go to www.gov.uk and search ‘Tax avoidance enablers’. Details of when a declaration can be made and what should be included in a declaration are set out in Statutory Instrument 1245/2017.

More information

If you’re unhappy with our service, tell the person or office you’ve been dealing with. They’ll try to put things right. If you are still not happy, they’ll tell you how to make a formal complaint.

This factsheet is one of a series. For the full list of factsheets in our compliance checks series, go to www.gov.uk and search ‘Compliance checks factsheets’.

Our privacy notice

Our privacy notice sets out the standards that you can expect from us when we ask for information or hold information about you. For more information, go to www.gov.uk and search ‘HMRC Privacy Notice’.