How These Guides Are Made

Last updated: 5 November 2026

The guides on this site are researched, drafted and checked with AI tools (Anthropic's Claude). I approve every guide before it is published, with the result of every check in front of me, and every change to a published guide before it goes live.

I'm Liam Williams, and I run Tax Tribunal Help as a personal project. I'm a student of the Chartered Institute of Taxation; I'm not a solicitor or a chartered tax adviser. This page explains how a guide is made, what the checks can't do, how you can check a guide yourself, and how to tell me about a mistake.

Why AI Tools

A sound guide to a tax tribunal question means reading the legislation, HMRC's guidance and manuals, the tribunal's rules and many tribunal decisions. AI tools let one person research and check guides at a depth that would otherwise take a team. They also make mistakes, including citing cases that don't exist, so every draft goes through the checks below before it reaches me.

Before A Guide Is Published

• The topic. An AI tool suggests a shortlist, using a map of which parts of the law the site already covers and what people search for, and I choose or approve the topic.

• Research. An AI researcher works from the primary sources: the legislation on legislation.gov.uk, HMRC's guidance and manuals on GOV.UK, the tribunal's rules, and the decisions themselves, from the National Archives' Find Case Law or downloaded by hand from BAILII. It records where each point comes from.

• The draft. An AI writer turns that research into a plain-English guide.

• Review. Three AI reviewers, each run separately from the writer, then read it: an editor, for clarity and the site's style; a fact-checker, which checks each case, statute, quote, deadline and figure against its source; and a reader advocate, which reads it as someone appealing on their own would, looking for questions it leaves unanswered. Their findings are fixed, or put to me where they are my call, and any legal point the fixes add or change goes back to the fact-checker.

• Scripted checks. Scripts then check that:

  • every case the guide cites links to a recognised free copy of the decision, such as Find Case Law, BAILII or GOV.UK, or to this site's own analysis of it, or is on a short list I have signed off where no free copy exists online;
  • each quote's words are found, word for word, in a saved copy of the decision (the fact-checker reads the decision for any quote the script can't place, and a quote from an old decision with no free copy is checked against a later decision or official guidance that quotes it);
  • links within this site work, and links to other sites are tested where those sites allow automated checks (some, BAILII among them, don't);
  • every figure drawn from the site's file of figures fills in properly. The figures the guides use most, such as the main deadlines and penalty rates, are kept in that one file with a note of where each comes from, so when one changes, every guide that uses it is found and updated from that one entry.

  A guide that fails these checks isn't published.

• My approval. I see every change and the result of every check, and nothing is published until I approve it.

After A Guide Is Published

The live page is then checked: that it loads with every heading and the disclaimer, that every figure has filled in, and, after a change, that each changed passage is live.

This is how each new guide is made now. The process has grown since the site began, and guides from earlier in the year were made with fewer of these steps. In October 2026 all of them were checked again against their sources, in two site-wide AI reviews, and against the Budget when it changed the law. The errors those reviews confirmed have now all been corrected, each only once I approved it. If you relied on a guide before 6 November 2026, read its current version, as it may have been corrected since. Before any change to a guide goes live, the case, link and style checks run again.

What The Checks Can't Do

The checks make errors less likely. They can't rule them out: AI tools make mistakes, the checks can miss them, and so can I. The scripts can confirm that a case links to a recognised copy of the decision or to this site's analysis of it, that a quote's words appear in a saved copy of the decision and that a link still opens where the site lets scripts check; they can't tell whether a guide has read the law correctly. That rests on the AI fact-checker and on me, and the October reviews found errors in published guides, which have since been corrected. The law also changes after a guide is written. Before you rely on a guide, check its sources, as the next section shows.

How To Check A Guide Yourself

• Cases. Click a case's linked name or citation (the rare old case with no free copy online has no link). It opens the decision on Find Case Law, BAILII or GOV.UK, or this site's own analysis of the case, which links the decision. Numbers in square brackets, like [37], are paragraph numbers in the decision cited, so you can find the passage the guide relies on.
• The law. Acts and regulations link to their sections on legislation.gov.uk, where the "Changes to legislation" note says how up to date the text is and lists any changes not yet made to it. HMRC's guidance and manuals link to GOV.UK.
• Figures. Deadlines, rates and penalty amounts change. Confirm the current figure at its source, usually GOV.UK or legislation.gov.uk.
• Whether a case is real. Never cite a case to HMRC or the tribunal that you haven't read yourself. The steps in How To Find And Verify Real Case Law work on any guide, this site's included.

Spotted An Error?

Email contact@mail.taxtribunalhelp.co.uk. Please say which guide and what is wrong. Don't send details of your own tax affairs: the guides can't advise on them, and a correction doesn't need them. I read every report myself. Your email and your details are never put into the AI tools that make the guides: if a guide needs correcting, I pass on only the error and its source. When a mistake is confirmed, I correct it. The Privacy page explains how emails are handled.

Information, Not Advice

The guides explain the law and tax tribunal procedure in general terms. They are not legal or tax advice. For advice on your situation, consult a qualified tax adviser, accountant or solicitor. If you can't afford one, Do You Need A Representative At The Tax Tribunal? covers the free help that exists and how to find a paid adviser.