Have your say on HMRC One-To-Many letters
The ATT plans to trial a series of Special Interest Groups, looking at particular areas of tax and issues encountered by members in professional practice.
The first of these will focus on HMRC’s ‘One-To-Many' (OTM) letter campaigns. Most members are likely to have come across this approach, where HMRC send one standard letter to a group of taxpayers and/or agents. The letters can be used for different purposes, from purely educational pieces through to prompts to report income/gains which HMRC have reason to believe should be taxable.
Purpose of the discussion group
The ATT is actively involved in HMRC’s One-To-Many Compliance Advisory Board (OCAB), which meets quarterly to discuss issues and upcoming campaigns in this area. We regularly review proposed OTM campaigns and feedback to HMRC with comments on the intended letter content, as well as suitability for an OTM approach and potential risks or other issues with a proposed campaign.
Despite OCAB’s best efforts, not every OTM letter goes through the group review and refinement process, and we are not always able to share final versions. We are therefore keen to gather feedback from members regarding any issues with particular OTM letters received, so we can take feedback to OCAB with a view to helping improve HMRC’s OTM messaging going forward. Any such feedback will be suitably anonymised.
What, when and where?
We are aiming to hold monthly drop-in sessions, run by one of our Technical Officers. These will be informal discussion groups, where members will be able to discuss OTM letters they have seen and highlight any issues they cause either to members in practice or to their clients. Our Technical team can then feed back issues to HMRC as appropriate.
The sessions will be up to 45 minutes in length and held via Teams, with invitations sent to a member list but with absolutely no obligation to attend all sessions – members are welcome to drop into any of the sessions if they encounter issues with any particular OTM letters or wish to discuss problems caused by HMRC’s use of this approach.
Interested in signing up?
If you’d like to receive invitations to the OTM discussion groups, please email us once you have read the relevant Terms of Reference. We aim to launch the group in the autumn.
If you’d prefer to raise any issues on OTM letters in private, please feel free to do so via the email link above.