SDLTM80640 - Compliance: Rights and obligations

Communication: Off the record conversations

All contact with the purchaser and their representatives should be recorded. This includes all telephone and face to face conversations, however informal.

If the case has to be settled at a Tax Tribunal, the Tribunal is entitled to consider the evidence of such informal conversations and without a note on file of what was said, it will be difficult to rebut any unfavourable hearsay evidence from the purchaser or agent.

Such notes of conversations are also necessary to give a complete history of a case to anyone reading the case for the first time following

• a change in personnel
• a complaint on the case

The Revenue Adjudicator has specifically criticised HM Revenue & Customs on a number of cases for failing to keep such records.

Any requests that a compliance caseworker talks off the record should be politely but firmly refused.

The compliance caseworker can say that they are prepared to discuss matters on a without prejudice basis but they should not at any time say, or imply, that anything they say is not to be a matter of record.