Readers' forum: A wise move?

Our client is a UK-based limited company that has been subject to an enquiry from HMRC. The investigation constitutes a full review of accounting and tax records across the whole business and its owners. As part of its enquiry HMRC has requested a backup of our client’s Sage 200 accounting software. Our client has used this software for many years. Consequently it contains data for multiple years only one of which is within the period of enquiry so we are reluctant to send it to HMRC.

We have extracted the nominal ledger for the relevant year into Excel but HMRC has insisted on having the full Sage 200 backup. Our IT provider tells us that it is impossible to isolate a single year of data within the program. HMRC has stated that the backup constitutes the statutory records of the company so there is...