IDG33000 - Day-to-day situations where you may be unsure of how to protect customer confidentiality: Business partnerships
General
You may receive a request for information about a business partnership from one of four parties:
- The ‘nominated partner’ of an existing business partnership
- An ‘ordinary’ partner (in other words not nominated) of an existing business partnership
- An ex-partner (whether they were the nominated partner or not) of an existing business partnership
- An ex-partner (whether they were the nominated partner or not) of a dissolved business partnership.
The procedures for dealing with each type of party is set out below. The next section explains how to identify whether the requestor is the nominated partner or not.
Identifying ‘nominated partners’
The nominated partner is the individual responsible for dealing with tax affairs on behalf of the partnership. In the vast majority of cases this can be identified from the Self Assessment record.
If you have any concerns or misgivings about the identity of the nominated partner, you should ask to see a copy of the partnership agreement. The partnership agreement should explicitly state who the nominated partner is.
The vast majority of business partnerships have ‘partnership agreements’. If you encounter a case where there does not appear to be a partnership agreement, please contact Information Strategy (see IDG90100).
Procedure for disclosing information
Nominated partners
You may disclose any information about the business partnership’s tax affairs to the nominated partner.
Ordinary partners
In most cases you must not disclose any information about the partnership’s tax affairs to a partner who is not the nominated partner. There are two exceptions to this:
- Where the nominated partner has provided his or her express written consent that HMRC may disclose information to an ordinary partner. For more guidance on obtaining consent, please see IDG43000.
- Where the partnership agreement stipulates otherwise. In this case, you must obtain a copy of the partnership agreement, and contact Information Strategy for further guidance (see IDG90100 for contact details)
You may disclose partnership information to an ordinary partner that relates only to their own personal tax affairs, but before making the disclosure you must ensure that the requested information does not contain any details in respect of the other partners or the partnership as a whole.
Ex-partners of existing partnerships
An ex-partner (whether nominated or not) has no access to information about the partnership for a time they were not a partner.
However, an ex-partner does have the right to access information about the partnership, for the time they were a partner, but only in respect of their own personal tax affairs.
The exception to this is where the nominated partner has provided his or her express written consent stating that HMRC may disclose information to the ex-partner. For more guidance on obtaining consent, please see IDG43000.
Ex-partners of dissolved partnerships
All ex-partners of a dissolved partnership are treated equally; the ex-nominated partner does not have any rights which ex-ordinary partners do.
We may disclose information to an ex-partner of a dissolved partnership only with the consent of all ex-partners.
If the consent of all ex-partners is not available, the ex-partner who requests the information must provide us with all consent which is available and provide reasons why the consent of certain ex-partners is not. Please then contact Information Strategy who will advise on the procedure you should then take.
You may disclose partnership information to an ex-partner that relates only to their own personal tax affairs, but before making the disclosure you must ensure that the requested information does not contain any details in respect of the other ex-partners or the partnership as a whole.
Enquires about pre-1996 tax records of a partnership
If you receive a request for information about the pre-1996 tax records of a business partnership, please contact Information Strategy (see IDG90100) in the first instance.
Further guidance
Contact Information Strategy (see IDG90100) if you have any further queries.
