On 30 September 2019, HMRC added guidance on its revised Business Risk Review (BRR) process to the Tax Compliance Risk Management manual. The BRR is generally applicable to businesses with a turnover of over £200m, or business that are particularly complex, and is the process by which HMRC evaluates, and categorises, the tax compliance risk profile of large businesses.

The revised process, referred to as BRR+, will provide for four risk categories (compared to the original two), namely; low, moderate, moderate-high and high.

The BRR takes place at least annually for customers who are not “low risk” (for low risk taxpayers, the BRR is generally carried out every 3 years).

Under the BRR+, a business will be assessed against three specific behaviour areas: 

  • systems and delivery
  • internal governance; and
  • approach to tax compliance

For each area, HMRC has provided a number of “low risk” indicators – a business will be categorised under BRR+ by reference to the number of such indicators that it fails to meet.

The revised guidance can be viewed here.