HMRC forms

Before you post anything to HMRC

The first question is whether the form is needed at all. A great deal of wasted effort goes into filling in the right form for a slightly different situation, or one that an online service replaced. Where a digital route exists it is faster, it is acknowledged, and it leaves a record you can point at later.

The second is authorisation. If you want someone to deal with HMRC for you, that is set up once through an agent authorisation rather than form by form — and it saves repeating the exercise every time something comes up. Without it, HMRC will not discuss your affairs with anyone else, however obviously they are acting for you.

Keep a copy of everything you send and note the date. HMRC post goes astray often enough to matter, and in a dispute about a deadline the question is usually what you can show rather than what happened. Where a form carries a reference number — a UTR, an employer reference, a VAT number — check it against your own records rather than from memory; a form processed against the wrong reference can take months to trace.

Finally, one caution about anything asking for bank details or a repayment. HMRC does not email or text asking for personal or payment information, and it does not phone demanding immediate payment. If something arrives claiming to be from HMRC and creates urgency, treat that urgency as the warning rather than the instruction.