AH1360 - General Commissioners: Conduct of hearing: Service of Notices

Every notice required under The General Commissioners (Jurisdiction and Procedure) Regulations SI 1994/1812 is to be made in writing, unless the Commissioners authorise it to be given orally. The regulations also detail that service of a notice is to be made by post to a person's proper address, or by facsimile or other similar means, or delivered to him or left at his proper address. The person to be served is identified for specified bodies, for example companies and partnerships, and the proper address of those bodies is defined.

When preparing notices to be issued by the Commissioners, you should ensure that they are addressed in accordance with the requirements of the regulations.

The regulations also permit the Commissioners to dispense with the foregoing requirements as to service of notices in certain circumstances. Where someone to whom or on whom a notice has to be served under the regulations (other than a witness summons) cannot be found, has died, has no known representative, is out of the UK or on whom service cannot readily be made for some other reason, the Commissioners are permitted to dispense with the requirement that a notice is served altogether or substitute a different form of service such as an advertisement in a newspaper.

In appropriate cases where appeals remain open and where a taxpayer cannot be traced or where notice of a hearing cannot be served on him for some other reason, you should ask the Commissioners to consider dispensing with service or substitute service as indicated above.