CH206320 - How to do a compliance check: data-gathering powers: introduction
Para 1 of Schedule 23 to the Finance Act 2011 gives HMRC officers the powers to obtain data from relevant data-holders. These powers come into force on 1 April 2012, and apply to relevant data even if the data relates to periods before that date.
The data-gathering powers modernise and simplify the information gathering powers.
These are different from and additional to the information and inspection powers, see CH212000.
The data-gathering powers are information powers to be generally utilised for gathering specific pieces of information about a group of taxpayers, for use in risk analysis.
The information may be sought for any of the taxes listed in CH28120. This includes foreign tax so that the UK can meet its international obligations to exchange information.
Safeguards have been built into the legislation and our procedures to ensure that the data-gathering request in the ‘data-gathering’ notice is reasonably required by the issuing officer
- for the purpose of collecting data from a data-holder that is relevant to the compliance checks, and
- only requesting information from the relevant data-holders, see CH206380
All HMRC Schedule 23 data-holder notices should be issued by the specialist Data Acquisition and Exchange (DAE) team (This content has been withheld because of exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act 2000) .