Self assessment return - random checks??

[TabbyCTA]

Hi,

has anyone ever had their self assessment return randomly audited? What was the process and what did you have to provide?

tia

Not personally but I work in tax so have had to provide the information. You should have six years records, paper or scanned and can be asked to produce them.

I only do a tax return as we claim child benefit- I’m not self employed. All of my income tax is PAYE. What would they want from me?

Are you the highest earner?

Yes we claim it for the NI benefits and then pay it back

I had a supposedly random audit last year. It was a nightmare.

Lots of questions about property I had sold (none), how much I had paid for my house, how I had paid for it (bought in 1990!) etc etc. Really bizarre.

At the end I got fined £100 for “a careless mistake” - income (taxed at source) declared with a typo so eg x580 instead of x850

Must have cost them much more than that with all the correspondence.

Payslips, and all bank accounts to make sure all interest was declared. Pensions and benefits in kind details, company cars health insurance etc. any other financial info. Isas stocks shares premium bonds everything you declared in the form needs to be proved. if you for example didn't declare interest from savings that would be unusual for a higher rate tax payer as you would generally have some savings. I just did one for a client today, I think that's everything.

They may have reason to believe that you didn’t declare benefits in kind or savings income over £500. Your Self Asst submission may have mismatched the p11d from the employer or the notification HMRC would’ve got from the bank or building society. Is this possible ?