Who’s Tracking “Track and Trace”?

There are many reasons why one might become angry about the “track and trace” controversy. You might simply feel that “consultants” fees are too high!

Much of my work involves assisting firms who have been subject to retrospective contract compliance audits which have an explicit aim of recouping mis or over-claimed fees. This is, of course, entirely legitimate.

In a recent example we helped one firm avoid this, to a 5 figure sum, where we contend they had no power to do so. And yet they still tried.

A couple of years ago we assisted with an 18 month audit saga over a couple of thousand quid. This cost the firm hundreds of wasted hours in “self-verification” exercises, they had a commercial, without prejudice, offer to settle rejected and ended when the ICA determined that the LAA should learn the de minimis principle.

Then there was the famous 14p appeal over an argument about the rounding up of VAT, they finally backed off.

Unreasonable though these examples might be we certainly need a similar level and ferocity of auditing of Track and Trace. Is it time to put the LAA in charge of this?

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