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Written question asked by Lord Redwood (Conservative) on Friday, 16 December 2022, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 20 December 2022. It was answered by Victoria Atkins (Conservative) on Thursday, 5 January 2023 on behalf of the Treasury.

VAT: Registration

Question

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of recent trends in the time taken to process applications for new business VAT accounts.

Answer

In July 2022 HMRC came under a significant attack from VAT registration fraudsters and we saw the number of registrations being sent to HMRC increase to unprecedented levels. To deal with this issue a number of measures were urgently put in place to protect genuine customers and to stop the increase in fraudulent activity. These measures entailed additional security checks that meant that some genuine customers were caught in the new processes to ensure the authenticity of the registration being made. HMRC does understand the frustrations from agents and businesses and are working to ensure all genuine registrations are processed as quickly as possible.

Due to the high numbers of new registrations being submitted to HMRC during the summer, we did not always meet our service standard over that time.

HMRC aims to turn around most VAT registrations within 40 working days and is currently meeting that service level agreement, although some cases do take longer due to additional compliance checks or complexity. The average time between registration and opening of new business VAT accounts in 2022 so far is 13 days, and the maximum time has been 291 days.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
112030
Session
2022-23
Related items
VAT: Registration
Monday, 16 January 2023
Written questions
House of Commons
VAT: Registration
Monday, 16 January 2023
Written questions
House of Commons
Grouped for answer
Yes
Subjects
Registration VAT
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk