Treat you as honest

Readers will be interested, and gratified to hear that HMRC will always treat you as honest. The following is an extract from HMRC’s “Your Charter” which states:

 Your rights – What you can expect from us:

  1. Respect you
  2. Help and support you to get things right
  3. Treat you as honest
  4. Treat you even-handedly
  5. Be professional and act with integrity
  6. Tackle people who deliberately break the rules and challenge those who bend the rules
  7. Protect your information and respect your privacy
  8. Accept that someone else can represent you
  9. Do all we can to keep the cost of dealing with us as low as possible

 Your obligations – What we expect from you:

  1. Be honest
  2. Respect our staff
  3. Take care to get things right.

Considering that we have one of the most complex tax systems, HMRC seems to have set itself and the nation’s tax payers a high bar to clear. Compliance with a known legal obligation is one thing, compliance with an unknown legal obligation is quite another.