HMRC recognises that currently there may be practical difficulties in obtaining “wet” signatures for option to tax elections and in sending in option to tax notifications.
To help taxpayers and agents HMRC has introduced a temporary extension to the time limit for notifying options to tax (normally 30 days). Businesses now have 90 days to notify elections to opt to tax made between 15 February and 30 June 2020 (previously 31 May 2020).
Where a notification is submitted with an electronic signature it must be accompanied by evidence that the signatory is an authorised signatory and, if the form is being submitted by a third party, that the authorised signatory has authorised the third party to submit the form on their behalf.
Option to tax notifications and authorised signatory details can be emailed to optiontotaxnationalunit@hmrc.gov.uk
In a separate exercise HMRC are updating all the notices relating to the option to tax with an updated address details for submitting forms.