The UK Inland Revenue has announced that it will notify tax advisers when it is about to undertake an employer compliance review of one of their clients. This gives tax advisers the opportunity to help prepare their clients for the procedures, which review the tax arrangements for company employees.
Up until the April 20 2004 announcement the Inland Revenue's employer compliance teams sent notification of an impending employer compliance review to the employer, but not to their tax adviser. The change increases the level of cooperation between the tax authorities, tax advisers and their clients and means that tax advisers will get simultaneous notification of an imminent review.
UK tax advisers welcomed the announcement, which took effect immediately. According to John Whiting, a tax partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London, providing early notification to tax advisers should make the employer compliance review process quicker and more efficient.
"The Inland Revenue is often quite happy if we do a lot of the checking work for them," said Whiting. "All three parties have an interest in making this work. As a general principle we've been calling for this for a long time and it is a very helpful step forward."
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