More Specialist HMRC Teams

As part of their ongoing assault on tax avoidance, HMRC have created four specialist teams to handle compliance checks into direct tax avoidance schemes used by small and medium sized enterprises (SME's). SME's are defined as companies, partnerships or self-employed businesses with a turnover of under £30M and with less than 250 employees.

The teams are located in the following regions:

• Central – Stoke
• East – various locations
• South East – Bournemouth
• London and Anglia – Luton

These teams will deal with all SME compliance checks which involve direct tax avoidance risks, as from 1^st December. Cases within the current HMRC Employee Benefit Trust (EBT) Settlement Strategy are excluded from these arrangements.

HMRC hopes to transfer approximately 1,850 ongoing SME compliance checks to the new teams by the end of January 2012. Taxpayers and their agents will be notified in writing of a change to both case officer and office dealing with the their enquiry.