Did you see the news that the VOA is hiring 1,000 new tax inspectors to value all those £2m houses for the luxury homes tax?
I definitely think this is a sign that HMRC has the ear of government, with a promise of give us more resources and we will be able to collect more tax.
And I think I have mentioned that HMRC caught 800 buy-to-let investors who had failed to declare or pay their Capital Gain Tax owed on property sales.
Those transgressors will no doubt have been caught by running AI through the Land Registry and self-assessment returns.
All of us would be incredibly naïve to imagine that HMRC is not fully on top of the potential to use AI across Companies House SH01s, new filings of articles, etc, and cross-check the data against Corporation Tax and Self-Assessment returns.
Start planning now for a wall of challenges to EMI schemes and the rest! And woe betide your clients if the valuations report supporting the number used in a tax filing is not grounded in solid, evidence-based facts and detail.
We have been planning for this since the get go. We never underestimate the importance of justifying the number we provide in a valuation report through the use of the most appropriate data, academic research and best practice.
Just one small example of our thorough approach, is the fact that every report has a declaration about what data we have used and where we got it from, what we have included and excluded from the data provided to us and specific comments where there is data that commands special attention because it has a major impact on the exercise.
Our job, quite simply, is to provide your clients with the very best valuation report we can and one that stands up to scrutiny both now and in years to come. We work on the basis that it could end up being scrutinised by new leadership teams at the company, employees, buyers, investors, tax authorities and the courts. We want anyone who wants to have a go to realise that there really is little point, unless they want to have a very expensive fight which they may well lose.
If you have been working on a project that involves a valuation which has already been established before you got involved, and you have a sense the number or the supporting arguments may not be up to scratch but you don’t quite know why, do give us a buzz.
We won’t charge you if you want to explain your concerns on a no-names basis, but we will give you some suggestions about how to think about how to validate everything in the report so you and your client don’t have a lingering worry that the number used might come back to bite you.
Have a great start to the spring.
