Tax funding provider and lessor Syscap
has accused HM Revenue and Customs of winding down its Time to Pay
scheme, claiming businesses should no longer rely on it.
Time to Pay (TTP) provides a short-term
payment holiday for businesses unable to meet their tax bills. If
businesses are unable to gain the tax relief, Syscap’s tax funding
service could help to bridge the gap.
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A total of 114,600 requests were made
for TTP arrangements betweeen January and September 2010, of which
6,290 were declined.
Philip White, Syscap CEO, accused
HMRC of intentionally making it harder for businesses to qualify,
claiming the percentage of declined requests has grown from 2.6
percent for the whole of 2009 to 5.2 percent for the year to end
September in 2010.
Meanwhile, Syscap has experienced an
upturn in requests for tax funding of 132 percent between April and
July this year, a trend it attributed to the lower number of
approved TTP requests.
White said: “We’ve maintained a
prudent approach to lending and we’ve continued with appropriate
and robust due diligence.”
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By GlobalDataA spokeswoman for HMRC denied TTP criteria had
become more difficult to meet, saying: “HMRC remains absolutely
committed to demonstrating a sympathetic approach to businesses
with genuine, short-term difficulties. We’re not getting tougher on
making TTP arrangements and we’re using exactly the same criteria
as we’ve always used.”
She added that there were no plans to wind the scheme down.
White said: “It’s become an exclusive
club and the HMRC is making membership harder. We’ve seen customers
who have taken three months to go through the application process.
By the time it’s taken three months, the game’s over and you have
to pay anyway.
“It’s putting further pressure on
cash-strapped businesses that had become reliant on the facility in
the absence of appropriate funding from institutional lending
sources.
“The
worst thing that could happen is that a business applies, gets
rejected, and is left in the lurch. We suspect that is now going to
happen more frequently.”
