Taxman defends business Time to Pay policy

HM Revenue and Cutoms has strongly denied claims that the Time to Pay (TTP) scheme is keeping businesses afloat.

Dr Mark Abani, head of debt management and enforcement at HMRC, said the department had not been storing up problems despite signing off “billions” in TTP allowances for UK businesses.

Abani added that HMRC had industrialised it’s responses to TTP in response to the high number of applications it had received since 2008.

Addressing an audience at a conference hosted by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), Abani said: “Quite a few billion has been through TTP, but I’m not going to reveal figures.

“For those who do not engage we have increased our call centre and are introducing more analytics into our business. If you do not want to play the game, we will relentlessly pursue you until we get our share.”

Abani added that it was important for struggling businesses to tell HMRC about their problems as soon as possible, because often the taxman is not made aware of a business’ problems until an insolvency practitioner has been appointed.

He concluded: “PAYE and VAT are part of running a business, and HMRC is not an alternative bank. We will ask businesses to pay all liabilities as they come due while we are deferring their debt amount. They will need to show HMRC how they are restructuring their business, and show us that they will not fall into the same trap.”

This article is taken from “Credit Today”, Click here for link to website

Link to HMRC

Link to the ICAEW