Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what was the (a) average and (b) maximum time between initial registration and the opening of a new business VAT account in 2022.
In July 2022 HMRC came under a significant attack from VAT registration fraudsters and we saw the number of registrations being sent to HMRC increase to unprecedented levels. To deal with this issue a number of measures were urgently put in place to protect genuine customers and to stop the increase in fraudulent activity. These measures entailed additional security checks that meant that some genuine customers were caught in the new processes to ensure the authenticity of the registration being made. HMRC does understand the frustrations from agents and businesses and are working to ensure all genuine registrations are processed as quickly as possible.
Due to the high numbers of new registrations being submitted to HMRC during the summer, we did not always meet our service standard over that time.
HMRC aims to turn around most VAT registrations within 40 working days and is currently meeting that service level agreement, although some cases do take longer due to additional compliance checks or complexity. The average time between registration and opening of new business VAT accounts in 2022 so far is 13 days, and the maximum time has been 291 days.