The Facts

Yes, they are. The government are looking to make back as much of the money lost over the pandemic as possible. They don’t want to raise taxes (again) so the only way to get more money is to check people are paying what they should. 

That means more investigations.

HMRC like to do inspections on whole types of industries. So, hair salons had it a few years ago, where HMRC investigated loads of them. It could happen to tattoo studios/artists too as we all know someone not doing what they should with their taxes.

Well, an investigation can be triggered by many things, from something on your tax return that makes HMRC suspicious to somebody deliberately reporting you (maybe an ex-partner or business partner, an unhappy customer, or a jealous relative) or a tax inspector could see your studio or get tattooed by you and see/hear something odd, or it could even just be purely random!

HMRC might just send you a letter asking some questions, they might call you to discuss them, or they might want to meet you in person.

It can be a very long, stressful, confusing, and generally awful experience dealing with HMRC throughout an investigation, but that’s where TIPS comes in!

We will deal with and fight HMRC for you. We’ll answer their letters, we’ll speak to them on the phone so you don’t have to, and we’ll politely tell them there’s no way we’re letting them interview you.

We take care of the work for this to make HMRC leave you alone as quickly as possible, ideally with no extra taxes or penalties to pay.

TIPS is our very own tax investigation service which allows us to defend you if you’re investigated by HMRC, without any fees racking up in the background during the whole process. It includes:

Detailed books and records investigations

Aspect enquiries up to £3000 (enquiries where HMRC are just checking 1 very specific thing about your taxes)

PAYE or VAT visits

Full representation and challenging of HMRC’s arguments

Dealing with any letters, calls, or emails from HMRC on your behalf

Making sure you have a strong defence that is based on facts, not your ability to afford a defence

Putting you on equal footing with HMRC right from the start

Protecting your business by achieving a fair investigation outcome, without any extra accountancy fees.

No. We will deal with short, quick HMRC enquiries for clients with no charge, typically ones that can be covered in one letter or phone call. Most will be bigger than that and there will be costs incurred for us as they can take a long time.

We have thought for a while on the fairest way to do this for all clients. We didn’t want to increase prices for everybody as that seemed unfair as some will do everything 100% correct and have a tiny chance of being investigated and others… well, let’s just say they may have a higher chance of being checked by HMRC.

So we're giving you the choice of whether to take this service or not!

Without TIPS, we will charge you £60 per hour to go through everything with HMRC for you. These things can be huge amounts of work. They need time, knowledge, experience and skill, and we can’t work for free. 

TIPS is much cheaper than the costs of paying by the hour if you get investigated.

With TIPS, ALL of our costs are covered in dealing with the investigation for you. So if that takes 2 hours, 20 hours, or 200 hours, you don’t pay any extra fees, it’s all covered.

It’s a one-off annual fee (depending on the size of your business) and we will go through the full investigation, no matter how long it takes, no matter what level of detail is required, ensuring that you have full representation and the strongest defence possible which puts you on equal footing with HMRC.

If you don’t want to sign up for TIPS, you don’t need to do anything. If you get investigated, then we will simply bill you for the time we need to spend fighting with HMRC for you.

If you’d like to sign up to TIPS, then let your accountant here know and they’ll give you a quote and go from there!