Raising standards in the tax advice market

In November 2020 HMRC published a summary of the responses received after its call for evidence on the tax advice market. This is separate from two other consultation exercises in 2020 which consider how to tackle promoters of tax avoidance and disguised remuneration tax avoidance schemes. It also follows the review by Sir Amyas Morse of the loan charge regime and his recommendation that the government should review the market in tax advice and tackle people who promote and may be mis-selling loan schemes. In fact perhaps because of the two existing consultation exercises mentioned above the response to Sir Amyas’ recommendation in the March Budget 2020 was on the wider subject of raising standards. Nonetheless while the focus is not on ‘avoidance’ or ‘schemes’ the familiar challenge of defining what is acceptable in tax planning is often implicit in the responses.

HMRC’s standard for agents...