If you lost your tax records?

Question

If you keep your tax records on disk, as I do, and you 'lost' it, would the Inland Revenue be sympathetic to you?  

I am, as a self employed person, obliged to provide and maintain my income/expenditure details for inspection by the Inland Revenue for seven years. Failure to do so could result in prosecution and imprisonment. They can accept my tax return, accept payment of taxes, but later go back 3, 4 or more years and question what they accepted in the first place and re-assess my tax payment. Why must I, as a private individual be expected to keep my records safe, when it would appear that the very office that I am accountable to are not required to do the same?  

This hypocrisy is beyond belief. I work hard and try to respect the law, but the Government of the U.K. is not showing any respect to the public, they are putting the lives of people in jeopardy, not to mention their financial stability and security, which in todays world should be sacrosanct.

Doethineb · Accepted Answer

This is a perpetual nightmare for those of us who are subject to the vagaries of the elements and whose records could be gone with the wind...or the flood...or the earthquake. That is why it is worth paying for an accountant nowadays, as for some reason an accountant's word is more likely to be accepted than one's own. It seems to be something of a lottery whether one's records will be scrutinized or not, but when they are things can be unpleasant.  I once had occasion to call upon my MP (who just happened to be the then PM) to rescue me once, when Inland Revenue persisted in communicating with me at a former professional address under a name by which I was not known at that address. The result was an estimated tax bill which bore no semblance to the reality of my situation against which no appeal was possible, as not having received any correspondence until the final demand (curiously enough, sent to my correct address) I had had no inkling of what was going on.  My MP sorted things out, but they took their revenge by scrutinizing my tax papers for several previous years in the hope of discovering some inconsistency.  One would have thought that they had better things to do.  

No, I have to agree that being so demanding when it comes to the taxpayer they should be far more accountable themselves.  We have been offered no acceptable explanation of how they just happened to lose those public records. For people under the police protection programme this is the stuff of nightmares.

swirlyblue1 · Answer

there's two different ways of losing records. there's losing your only copy of your records (like as you might) and there's losing a copy of something that's confidential (like hmrc.)
the rules that they have in place aren't the easiest to follow but they make enough sense. if they weren't there, we'd lose billions through tax evasion and that's just not on.
i'm not defending revenue & customs, they really screwed up but i don't think you can really compare the two cases. although it was good to see that their head resigned the very next day, there's so few people that take responsibility nowadays.

Anonymous · Answer

Well no as they still have all the details they lost.  You aren't comparing like with like are you?

They would say you should have backups and paper copies.

jacques · Answer

My bloody name was on that disk i got a letter saying they were sorry and not to worry that was it!. but wot can i do about it nothing u r totaly rite it must make u mad as hell as it does me

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If you lost your tax records?

4 Answers