Glenn, people in general feel that the Inland Revenue, the tax inspector, is a frightening or at least an authority type figure. How can you help in that way, dealing with the tax office?

Yes, as an ex-employee of the Inland Revenue, I understand the difficulties that they face, in that they have a tremendous workload, few staff, and deadlines they have to meet.
Because I understand this I can negotiate with the Inland Revenue, in a way that we can actually get the client, the Inland Revenue and myself to work through the investigation, if that’s what it is, efficiently, and close up and make it beneficial for everyone in terms of time and tax.
There was a case recently where we undertook an investigation, it was getting really complicated, really messy, letters going back and forth not making any progress whatsoever.

We asked that we have a face to face meeting with the Inspector of Taxes at their central London offices. It all seemed rather frightening at the start, I talked to the client and I said “to be honest, and to tell the truth, and to always answer the questions that they asked. Don’t elaborate unnecessarily.
We managed to tell the inspector what we wanted them to know, within the framework of what they wanted to know as well, we weren’t hiding anything. We managed to get the whole investigation closed up quickly, and within the next month we came to a mutual agreement with HMRC, and all the taxes were paid by the following month, so the interest and penalties were really really limited.

Whilst I was working with the Inland Revenue, where I was for 10 years, I was involved in conducting several tax investigations. This means that now if a client gets a call to attend an Inland Revenue interview, and they’re going to investigate his tax affairs, his tax returns and the accounts, going back several years, because I already know the strategy the Inspector Of Taxes is likely to employ, we can prepare a reasonable defence for this before we actually attend the interview. Thereby firstly saving time, secondly saving money, and hopefully also saving the client from exposing himself to too much tax.