CBHC LLP was recently featured in an article on HMRC’s Time to Pay scheme, written by Hugo Greenhalgh of the Financial Times. The piece outlined the seeming trend for the Revenue to turn down more VAT Time to Pay applications.
A CBHC spokesperson said: “The Time to Pay scheme had a really good start – in the early days it was a straightforward system that was invaluable to SMEs, since it gave them the financial breathing space they needed to ride out the recession.
However, HMRC has had to crack down on firms that might be applying for the scheme when they don’t really need its assistance. So in the past three or four months we have seen a shift in the protocol from simply answering a few questions about a business’s financial standing to a much more in-depth investigation. We are now being asked to answer a lot more probing questions, provide detailed forecasts, and we have even been warned that HMRC might just turn up at a client’s premises to review the company’s financial position in situ.
Given the squeeze on the public sector this is perhaps understandable, but at the same time we feel there is inconsistency within the system and its flexibility has been reduced. It does seem to depend on who picks up the telephone when you call HMRC, and we have found it has been an easier process for some clients than others –this can’t be attributed to sector either, since we have found no discernible correlation between the type of business and ease of claiming the support.”
