posted on 15 May 2020, updated on 15 May 2020
Social distancing and ‘stay at home’ policies in response to COVID-19 have made some of the rules for notifying HMRC of a decision to opt to tax land and buildings challenging to comply with.
To help businesses continue to meet their obligations HMRC is temporarily changing the rules on how options to tax are notified.
Normally, HMRC must be notified within 30 days of the decision to opt. For decisions to opt land or buildings made between 15 Feb 2020 and 31 May 2020, they have temporarily extended the notification period to 90 days.
In addition, if you are notifying HMRC that you have made a decision to opt to tax land and buildings you will temporarily be allowed to submit the 1614A form digitally with an electronic signature to: optiontotaxnationalunit@hmrc.gov.uk
When doing so, you must provide supplementary evidence to prove that the signatory has the correct authority to act on behalf of the business. If an agent is submitting the 1614A form electronically on your behalf, they must also provide additional evidence that proves that authority has been granted to the agent by yourself or your business to use this electronic signature.
Full details of the temporary changes can be found here.