Preparing for the Possibility of a Domicile Enquiry
Helen McGhee, a director and chartered tax advisor at Joseph Hage Aaronson LLP, explores who might be vulnerable to an HMRC enquiry on domicile and how best to deal with such enquiries.
Helen expands on the types of non-doms most vulnerable to scrutiny:
Taxpayers with a weak argument that they do not have a UK domicile of choice, but also those with a weak non-UK domicile of origin.
She also analyses how non-doms can protect themselves:
It's important to keep an up to date, running chronology of key life events and examine the impact of those life events.
Note the potential for HMRC to go back 20 years from the date of any chargeable transfer if no Inheritance Tax account has been delivered or a chargeable asset had been omitted.
Make sure you know your client before they embark on an interview.
Finally, she considers information requests under Schedule 36 to the Finance Act 2008:
Under Schedule 36, HMRC can only ask for information that is reasonably required to check the taxpayers tax position.
Joseph Hague Aaronson LLP
