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The set-up of partnerships and their members will be centralised with effect from February 2009, HMRC have announced.
An SA800 partnership return requires a declaration of the name, residence and unique taxpayer reference (UTR) for each partner. An online partnership return will fail validation and be rejected if the UTR for each and every partner has not been entered.
Substitute UTRs have been used by taxpayers and Revenue staff in circumstances other than the exceptional situations for which they were designed – such as for some non-UK resident partners.
HMRC have decided, therefore, to introduce a centralisation unit specifically for the set-up of partnerships, and this will be effective from February 2009 within the central agents authorisation team (CAAT) in Longbenton.
From that date, all partnerships and their members will be required to use a UTR issued by HMRC. The use of substitute references will no longer be acceptable. The Revenue’s previously published guidance that a substitute UTR can be entered as a workaround has been withdrawn.
The CAAT centralisation unit will respond to requests concerning the set-up of a partnership and its members. This will include all trading and investment partnerships – whether a general partnership, limited liability partnership or limited partnership – and all its members, whether they are individuals, companies or other entities, resident in the UK or outside the UK.
HMRC’s guidance will be changed to reflect this. CWF1 form should be used to notify CAAT of the partnership and its members, and it should specify the nature of the partnership business.
The centralisation unit will also respond in real time to partnership registrations at Companies House. These will be LLPs and LPs. This will enable the set-up of partnerships and the linkage of their members well in advance of filing obligation dates.
Returns submitted from 1 February 2009 with a substitute UTR will be strictly incorrect and may result in the return being sent back to the sender to correct the entry, with the potential for late-filing penalties if the return is not corrected within the additional time allowed.
HMRC say they ‘must have the correct information to conduct a risk assessment of the partnership and its members. This risk assessment being a cornerstone of the ITSA process’.
Where a partner is a limited company, the tax reference to be entered on the partnership return for that individual corporate partner is the ten-digit corporation tax UTR.
