Penalties for Inaccurate Information supplied to the Valuation Office Agency

This is perhaps of less immediate importance than the Government having decided to abrogate the decision of the Supreme Court in Mazars, for which the provisions of a draft Bill are out for consultation. It is nonetheless significant, however. The intention appears to be that the situation will be restored to that which prevailed before the decision, and so assessments which were split may now be re-merged, once again, with, in many cases, no doubt, quantity and other applicable allowances restored. 

It would seem that VOA will have to be requested to reinstate split assessments; and I wonder what degree of priority they will be able to give to this task, bearing in mind the need to clear the 2010 list cases, the advent of 2017 list appeals and the tax and “other government departments” work which, in their underfunded state, they still have to do. 

Billing authorities will, of course, have to make any refunds consequential upon this volte face; but the Government has said that there will be no compensation for them, if they have (no doubt in good faith) committed and spent the money which (perhaps years earlier) they were required to collect. They will be left, perhaps, in a state of even greater uncertainty than at present, as to what provision they might need to make in their accounts, against refunds (the Agency apparently being unable to help them as rating proceedings and information are now said to be “taxpayer confidential”). 

This is another consequence of the new appeals system; and it is, perhaps, appropriate to quote Professor Graham Zellick QC, former President of the Valuation Tribunal for England, as to the approach to the original proposal for CCA: “ I don’t know any other tax that can be levied where the taxpayer does not understand, in full, down to the last detail, the basis on which the tax man has calculated the tax due. It’s unprecedented, it’s unique and it’s wrong.” I cannot disagree with any of that statement which applies to the field of rate collection as forcefully as it does to that of rating valuation.

To come to the immediate purpose of this article, we now have the draft statutory instrument bringing into effect the new power for civil penalties to be imposed by VOA upon those who, in certain circumstances, supply incorrect information. This looks like another attempt to defeat what the VOA used to call “the appeals industry”, as any appeal against a penalty will have to be determined by the Valuation Tribunal; and the appeal against the assessment will not be permitted to be determined until the appeal against the penalty has been determined.

The appeal process is already unacceptably slow and we have yet to see whether and, if so, to what extent the situation will improve once the CCA software is sorted out. I can see this adding another year to the appeal process.