Paraskeva: No evidence of need to add burden on conveyancers
The government has been urged to reconsider plans to make conveyancers register individually with HM Revenue & Customs as tax advisers because they deal with stamp duty land tax (SDLT).
The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) said the move would duplicate regulatory effort and increase the regulatory burden in an area where “there is no significant issue in relation to compliance with tax law”.
The new requirement for tax advisers to register with HMRC is in the Finance Bill 2025-26, which is currently going through Parliament. HM Treasury has confirmed that it covers the submission of SDLT returns by conveyancers.
In a letter to James Murray MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, CLC chair Dame Janet Paraskeva said: “No case has been made out to justify the increased burden through a reduction in tax evasion or poor client service.”
She observed that CLC-regulated conveyancers were not permitted to give tax advice to their clients; they acted only as agents for their client in completing and submitting SDLT documentation and payment.
“Registration as tax advisers with HMRC would have the perverse effect of creating the impression that CLC conveyancers may provide tax advice,” Dame Janet went on. “This actually increases the risk of wrongdoing, by giving bad actors an opportunity to present themselves as tax advisers in a way that they cannot at present.”
Conveyancers were already tightly regulated, she went on, and “the instances of error or fraud in relation to SDLT that the CLC has to deal with are few in number and do not warrant this additional burden”. There was no evidence to support the registration requirement, she added.
Dame Janet went on: “I will observe here that this increase in the regulatory burden should also be seen alongside the unwelcome decision by HM Treasury to move anti-money laundering supervision away from frontline regulators of lawyers, passing it to the FCA.
“This too will inevitably duplicate effort and cost with no analysis pointing to reductions in money laundering as a result.
“I hope that Treasury ministers will be able to consider again whether the registration of specialist conveyancers with HMRC as tax advisers is proportionate to the risks ministers seek to address and whether the outcome will indeed be beneficial to the country as we strive to deliver growth.”
Last autumn, the Law Society told HM Treasury that the definitions of ‘tax adviser’ and ‘interaction with HMRC’ were “so broad that many legal professionals who do not hold themselves out as tax specialists, or who are not in any real sense tax advisers, would be caught”.
It argued that the regime should be confined to those who routinely acted as agents in relation to a client’s tax affairs, or who held themselves out as tax advisers.
“The compliance burden will likely fall most heavily on smaller practices, potentially shrinking the pool of affordable tax advice available to individuals and SMEs.
“At the same time the rules are not easily applied in the context of large firms, whose structure and management do not fit well with the assumptions in the legislation on how their businesses work and how they are structured.”
It pointed out that the registration scheme was targeted at behaviour, not competence.
