Tax inspectors could be disciplined if they fail to follow official guidance, under proposals in the consultation on modernising the taxman’s powers.

The call was one of several suggestions made on how to protect and safeguard the rights of taxpayers. Other proposals called for HM Revenue & Customs to put more effort into helping taxpayers get things right and allow deductions for legitimate compliance costs.

‘I am very supportive of this idea. The taxman is very quick to challenge advisers who mistakenly advise a client, so why shouldn’t tax inspectors be held accountable for their errors in a similar way,’ said Grant Thornton tax partner Mike Warburton.

The reliability of HMRC guidance and the consistency of its application have long been bugbears for advisers and taxpayers, who have claimed that too often individual tax inspectors develop interpretations that do not follow general guidance.

Responses to the consultation added that in some cases guidance was too complex and not updated regularly enough, making it difficult for taxpayers to understand.

Guidance released on the internet was very hard to locate and needed to be displayed in a more coherent manner.

HMRC is to draw up a new Taxpayers’ Charter, it said last week, as another part of the proposals, which have also seen the department put on hold plans to collect tax debts direct from individual bank accounts.

It does plan, however, to introduce powers to offset repayments of one tax against liabilities for another owed by an individual and to allow taxpayers to pay their bills with credit cards.

The charter is seen as a crucial document for improving relations between advisers and HMRC, as it will address concerns that some officers do not adhere to various codes of practice and set a reference point for judging HMRC’s performance.

The government has asked HMRC to begin work on drafting a charter. The department is now planning a series of meetings with tax experts and representative bodies to begin compiling the document, which could receive full legislative backing once it is completed.