Inland Revenue Enquiry Into My Tax Return

[darrent]

Just returned from a business trip to find a letter from the taxman stating they are looking at my last 2 self assessment returns, specifically my business mileage claims and my home office claims. I'm based at home full time as I work for a company in Sweden so I don't think the home office bit should be a problem. But my business mileage logs are far from perfect. You may recall from an earlier thread I don't receive a mileage allowance at all from my employer.

I have the miles, destination and who I met but the dates are mostly missing apart from the first few entries when I was feeling super organised. Will this be a massive problem???

[Vesuvius 996]

Eric Mc will be along in a minute, but the taxman takes a dim view of crappy records, especially when you've used the said crappy records to claim money from Gordo.

[Fidgits]

I had this once too...

Apparantly its just a random thing, every year they pick a few cases at random to go through in more detail.. as long as its all above board you'll be fine.

[Eric Mc]

It CAN be random - but hardly ever is. It seems they have picked these returns up because they are concerned about specific aspects of what was entered on them. That doesn't sound like a random enquiry to me.

Even if you have kept poor records about trips you took, you might be able to source details of the dates you claimed for by using alternative third party sources - expense payments linked to the trips which are showing on cheque book stubbs and credit card and bank statements will give you an idea of when the trips occured. The distances will be fixed and easily proved by referncing to any routefinder type software.
If you have an appointments diary or diary type notes of meeting with your clients/customers then you should be able to pinpoint when trips occured.