HMRC has published its report on the conclusion of the now defunct business record checks and there are lessons to be learned. Business record checks were a five-year programme of checks into the records of sole traders, partnerships and landlords, as HMRC sought to verify the records that were being kept by businesses and ‘encourage’ improvements.

The checks ran from 2011 to 2016 and they were wholly unpopular right from the beginning, as HMRC sought to prescribe accounting systems. A far cry from a meeting I attended in the mid 2000s when HMRC said that keeping records in a carrier bag, or the footwell of a car, was actually a filing system which they accepted.