7. They invite you to call

While members of HMRC are reluctant to give you their email addresses they are extremely keen to get you talking on the phone! All their letters contain a direct phone number and they often say, “If you have any questions, just give us a call…”

Inspectors are professional interviewers and they will make these phone calls seem like a friendly chat, but they are not friendly and they are not chatting. They are asking a series of leading questions designed to get a result for their investigation.

Phil Berwick, director of tax investigations at Tenon warns against telephone calls for taxpayers regardless of whether they are represented or not, “Even the most innocuous call… to an inspector can damage the progress of an enquiry. An inspector may use the opportunity to quiz the taxpayer in a way that [an] agent would never allow.”

HMRC officers make notes of all telephone conversations and those notes are weighted in favour of the investigating officer. If – later – you choose to appeal these notes will be produced as evidence: “On X day at X time you said, X, Y and Z now why are you saying something different?”

If you have not recorded the conversation or made contemporaneous notes it will be your word against theirs that what is written down is not a correct record of what was said.

Tax inspectors – like all of us – often see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear – but unlike the rest of us they have the power to send out some very large tax demands.