Consultative Forum for Large Businesses serviced by Local Compliance
Terms of reference
Purpose
To establish close, ongoing links between the Large and Complex Customer Team (L&C) in HMRC’s Local Compliance Business Unit, and their Large Business customers with a view to:
- Providing a forum within which the tax policy and operational issues that matter to large businesses can be debated in an atmosphere of mutual trust.
- Identifying the compliance burden on large business customers with a view to, where practicable, taking measures to reduce it; and
- Improving the service provided by L&C to its customers.
HMRC has a public commitment to consult with its customers on all major policy and operational issues, and to put the customer at the heart of everything it does. This forum will improve communication and consultation between large businesses and L&C with a view to increasing common understanding and improving the service that L&C provide. It will sit alongside existing links between HMRC and representative bodies, but provide a direct channel between L&C and its customers.
The definition of large business is primarily the EU definition:
The EU legislation defines a SME, rather than a large business. The inversion of that definition gives a definition for large business as, “a businesses having EITHER >250 employees; OR >€50M turnover AND €43M assets”. However in practice we also include “UK businesses owned by multi-nationals having >100 employees in the UK and which otherwise satisfy the criteria for number of employees, turnover and assets, globally”. We would also apply these definitions flexibly, rather than rigidly.
Membership
The Forum will consist of two sub groups:
- Tax Managers from Large Businesses
- Professional representatives and intermediaries, to include accountancy firms, trade bodies, CBI, ICAEW, ACCA, ICAS and CIOT.
HMRC side will include members with operational and strategic experience.
Business side will include members nominated through the CBI
HMRC will extend wide invitations to intermediaries and professional representative bodies, and members will self nominate or retain a watching brief.
Membership will rotate to maintain fresh challenge but without losing continuity.
Chair and secretariat
The Forum will be co-chaired by the Director of Local Compliance and by a business member from the Forum who will jointly prepare agendas. The co-chairs will also agree on a limit to membership numbers to prevent meetings from becoming unwieldy. L&C will provide secretariat.
Framework
Papers will be sent prior to meetings and members will be invited and encouraged to contribute between meetings.
Agendas and minutes will be posted on HMRC website, with the secretariat shown as a point of contact for additional comments.
Frequency of meetings
The two groups will meet for a trial period with meetings in May, September and December 2007 to discuss the impact of the 2006 Review of Links with Large Business. The groups will then review and assess their roles, and refresh the Terms of Reference if there is majority view that the Forum should continue on a formal basis.
