Key points
- Companies are required to maintain records to enable them to deliver a correct and complete return.
- It is a criminal offence to fail to keep such records.
- A company which is registered (or registerable) for VAT is required to keep ‘such records as the commissioners may by regulations require’.
- Judge McNall refers to bank statements as statutory records in Fresh Consulting and Support Ltd (TC8606).
- But bank statements cannot be statutory records. They duplicate its cash book which is a statutory record.
- The author does not believe that bank statements are statutory records but the First-tier Tribunal is not entitled to dismiss them as being outside its orbit.
Statutory records are records that taxpayers are required by a statute to maintain. There are three general statutory requirements for a company. FA 1998 Sch 18 para 21 requires a company ‘to keep such records as may be needed...