Couldwell Concrete Flooring v HMRC

In Couldwell Concrete Flooring v HMRC [2015] UKFTT 135 (23 March 2015) the FTT partially allowed an appeal against an information notice.

HMRC was applying to strike out an appeal against an information notice issued under FA 2008 Sch 36. Couldwell had appealed on the grounds that the documents required were not statutory records and that the information notice wrongly required it to prepare or create documents in a format in which they did not exist.

The FTT linked the definition of ‘statutory records’ in Sch 36 to the obligation to keep records imposed by FA 1998 s 21(5). It pointed out that this provision requires a company to keep all records which are ‘necessary to establish without doubt that a return is accurate’. The FTT also noted that the fact that a request for information required some act of accountancy did not mean that the information...