Registration process

HMRC guidelines

What happens if you do not register

You may receive a penalty if you do not register a relevant business. This includes carrying on business as an estate agency:

without being registered
after your registration has been cancelled

The amount of the penalty will depend on each individual case. HMRC will take into consideration:

if you told HMRC that you're not registered or HMRC has discovered it
your reasons for not registering
if you have had any previous warnings or penalties

When to register

You must register with HMRC before carrying on any activity as an estate agency business and pay the necessary.

Find out more about the fees you'll need to pay for money laundering supervision.

Annual supervision

At the end of each registration period, HMRC will send you a notice inviting you to update your registration by paying the annual fee on all your listed premises.

If you do not need your registration to continue you should deregister on your business.

If you do not pay the correct fee, then HMRC may terminate your registration and remove your business from the HMRC anti-money laundering register.

Before you apply to register

Before you apply you should:

complete an anti-money laundering risk assessment
put in place policies, controls and procedures to manage and mitigate the risks you have identified — HMRC will reject your application if you do not have these in place
add all officers, beneficial owners, senior managers and sole proprietors as responsible persons on the application
add all premises where supervised activity takes place

Approval check fee

You should select 'No' to the question 'Has (business name) been charged an approval check fee for (responsible person)?' if you're:

an estate agency business
an accountancy service provider
a letting agency business
a high value dealer
an art market participant

If you can provide evidence that the responsible person has paid the £40 approval check fee previously, you can select 'Yes'.

Applying to register

Watch a video about how to register for anti-money laundering supervision.

When you apply you must:

tell HMRC about your premises
pay the registration fees due

Find out more about the fees you'll need to pay for money laundering supervision.

HMRC will not review your application until you pay the fees.

After you've applied to register online

HMRC will carry out approval checks or a fit and proper test on the 'responsible' people you include in your application.

HMRC will send you an email which will outline the risks of corresponding by email.

If you agree to communicate using this method, HMRC may email you, to tell you:

what you need to do to progress your application
when HMRC have made a decision

HMRC may also telephone you to explain any required actions.

HMRC will review your application. This can take up to 45 days for new applications, but may take longer if HMRC need to contact you for:

extra information
payment
account updates

HMRC will send you an email when they have made a decision.

You can sign in at any time to check the status of an application.

You can appeal the decision if you disagree with the outcome.

This information is based on content from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and is used under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0

The original content can be found on the GOV.UK website.