Supplier Invoices Not In Your name

A JONES • Jun 23, 2017

What happens when invoices are not in your name? Historically over the years, HMRC would refuse these invoices by short paying you the amounts relating to the invoices not in your name. Come the end of their review of your claim a payment less the refused documents would be made to your bank with a future option of in turn going back to HMRC, where possible, with proof that you actually paid the supplier directly which would, if you were successful, trigger a 2nd payment of the outstanding balance. There has now been, what appears to be a change in procedure. In the last 3 months, on at least half a dozen occasions, HMRC have either returned the entire job very early on and asked for proof that these invoices were paid by the claimant directly to the supplier or they have kept the job with them but written to the claimant again asking for proof of payment direct to the supplier. I will give you an example of one from this week. - Mr. M from Preston. Mr M is in his late twenties, has a reclaim of around £10K and in recent years we have processed 2 separate reclaims for his parents and his brother. His dad is quite hands on, likes his DIY, is retired and the brother has a small construction company. Mr. M lived 40 miles from the site of the new build but both the parents and brother lived within 5 miles. The problem occurred because his Dad had been shopping quite a bit and some documents were in his name and sometimes with his home address on and his brother had purchased materials from his usual suppliers, Travis Perkins and Jewson and booked them to his trade account or paid for them online and had them delivered to his home address. His brother is not vat registered but the account at Travis is in the name of a company that he created when opening the account and the account at Jewson is in his personal name. Mr. M presented us with his bank account statements and we were able to match some of the payments to exact Jewson and Travis Invoices but only about half. On other occasions, Mr. M purely reimbursed his parents or brother, so in the eyes of HMRC, he did not purchase the goods from the suppliers. The claim is on-going at the moment, but it is quite a mess and in all probability, will land up costing him half his reclaim value (about £5K).