Changing interview notes

If you attend an enquiry with one or more HMRC officers they will make notes of the meeting and they will ask you to agree that they are a true and fair representation of what was said. The document can be used as evidence in any related tax enquiry.

Read the notes

While unlikely, you should never sign notes at the meeting if invited to do so. It is in any event not HMRC’s protocol to ask. When the notes are received consider:

• are there omissions that are directly or indirectly material to the enquiry?
• does it include comments you do not recall  were mentioned at the meeting?
• are the comments wholly accurate?
• do the notes include assumptions or infer facts that are incorrect? The notes should simply reflect what was said and done at the meeting and contain no conjecture about what they meant other than where the conjecture was stated in the meeting.
• if following the meeting you have found that information given at the time to be incorrect, while the interview notes can’t be changed to include the correct information, you can make the point in your response to HMRC.

Don’t amend or sign the notes “subject to amendment”. Instead list the changes you believe should be made using our Changing Interview Notes covering letter.