‘Are electronic files accepted by the HM
Revenue & Customs?’
‘YES’ HM Revenue & Customs
certainly do accept electronic documents as they, themselves,
have been tasked
to assist the Government achieve a target that customers will
be able to conduct 100% of their dealings with all government
departments electronically, by the end of 2005.
At present, the law makes no distinction
between electronic or paper records. As a result, HM Revenue & Customs
simply refer to 'records' in their guidelines. Whether a
business
keeps their records on paper or electronically makes little
difference. They do, however, insist that you inform them of
the format you use for your electronic storage. Therefore,
a business should advise their local VAT office that they wish
to store scanned document copies of all their records in 'format
X' (Tiff format etc) and that those records will be held on
CD or within document management system 'Y'.
