Does HMRC get it wrong?

The short answer is “yes”, sometimes. If you think that HMRC have come to an incorrect conclusion when dealing with your tax affairs there are a couple of routes open to you to try and get things changed.
The first is to ask HMRC to carry out a review using an officer not involved in your case. Is it worthwhile? Apparently it is – for the 2015/2016 year 57% of review requests resulted in a changed decision.
The second option which can be instead of as well as after an internal review is to appeal to an independent tax tribunal. Here the statistics are less encouraging with only 18% of decisions going against HMRC. Currently there are no “court fees” payable for making an appeal but fees ranging from £20 to £2,000 will be introduced in the not too distant future. It will be interesting to see how the statistics look after the fees are introduced!

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