CIS penalty errors

As agents we have to deal with the construction industry scheme (CIS) on a daily basis and would like to draw attention to the absurd amount of HMRC errors that we have to confront.

The work involved in rectifying these issues all adds to our costs and those of our clients.

One particular client has received over recent months no less than 164 erroneous £100 penalties from HMRC despite several letters and calls to various different departments to notify them that the client had ceased to trade during the year ended 5 April 2007.

Had they updated their systems when the first correspondence was sent which was before the new CIS scheme was introduced the issue of these penalties could have been avoided.

We feel that HMRC rely too much on automated computer systems which lack the obvious ability to rationalise the information supplied and if human...