Section 710: Recovery of unpaid corporation tax for accounting period beginning before change
2204.This section enables an officer of Revenue and Customs to assess and charge a linked person to an amount of unpaid corporation tax for an accounting period beginning before the change in the ownership of a company. It is based on section 767A of ICTA.
2205.Section 767A(1) of ICTA gives this assessment function to “the Board”, ie to the Commissioners for HMRC. In practice, the Commissioners delegate this function to officers of Revenue and Customs, and subsections (1) and (2) reflect this. This is a minor change in the law. See Change 5 in Annex1. In practice, the administration of sections 767A and 767AA of ICTA and the provisions which supplement them is restricted to a specialist group of officers. Change 5 has no effect on this practice.
2206.Like the source legislation, subsection (2) provides that “[a person]… may be assessed …”. This gives officers the power, but not the obligation, to assess linked persons, and therefore allows HMRC to exercise managerial discretion.
