Dividend Data vs Pure Tax Investigations

Comprehensive Spreadsheet Integration

The platform provides seamless integration with both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel via dedicated add-ins. Users access data through 16+ custom functions, such as DIVIDENDDATA_DIVIDENDS, DIVIDENDDATA_RATIOS, and DIVIDENDDATA_QUOTE. These functions allow for dynamic, live data retrieval directly into spreadsheet cells, transforming static sheets into powerful, auto-updating analysis tools. The integration requires no coding, maintaining the familiar spreadsheet environment while supercharging its capabilities with professional data feeds.

Extensive Historical & Fundamental Data Library

Dividend Data grants instant access to a deep historical database covering 30+ years of market data. This includes not only dividend history and forward-looking metrics but also complete fundamental data: income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, and over 100 key financial ratios (e.g., P/E Ratio, Debt-to-Equity). The coverage of 80,000+ tickers ensures data is available for a vast array of global stocks, ETFs, and other securities, supporting thorough historical trend analysis and comparative fundamental research.

Dividend-First Analytical Functions

Tailored specifically for income investors, the tool offers specialized functions that output critical dividend metrics. Users can retrieve forward annual dividends, forward dividend yields, next ex-dividend dates, payout ratios, and dividend growth rates with single formulas. This focused feature set allows for rapid screening, yield calculation, and sustainability analysis directly within a portfolio model or research sheet, streamlining the workflow for constructing and monitoring dividend growth portfolios.

Free Tier with Generous Monthly Credits

A key differentiator is the sustainable free access model. The platform offers a permanent free tier that provides 2,500 credits per month without trial expiration or credit card requirements. This allows users to perform substantial monthly analysis, such as pulling data for hundreds of stock queries, at zero cost. This model lowers the barrier to entry for individual investors and provides real utility before any upgrade consideration.

Specialist HMRC Insider Expertise

The firm is led by Amit Puri, a former senior HMRC Tax Inspector with over two decades of direct experience. This provides clients with an unparalleled strategic advantage, as the team possesses detailed, operational knowledge of HMRC's internal methodologies, investigation tactics, and decision-making processes. This insider perspective is applied to anticipate HMRC actions, formulate robust defence strategies, and negotiate from a position of informed strength, ensuring pragmatic and commercially focused outcomes.

Comprehensive Investigation Defence Services

Pure Tax Investigations offers a full-spectrum defence service covering the entire hierarchy of HMRC interventions. This includes managing routine compliance checks, complex cross-tax enquiries into large businesses, and the most serious civil fraud investigations conducted under Code of Practice 9 (COP9). The service encompasses handling HMRC Information Notices, engaging in Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), and representing clients at Tax Tribunals, providing end-to-end support throughout the dispute lifecycle.

Proactive Tax Disclosure Management

The firm specialises in managing voluntary disclosures to HMRC through its dedicated disclosure facilities. This includes expert guidance and submission management for the Worldwide Disclosure Facility (WDF) for offshore matters, the Let Property Campaign (LPC) for property income, and disclosures related to crypto assets, Indian interest income, and offshore trusts. This proactive service aims to regularise a client's tax position, minimise penalties, and achieve finality with HMRC before a formal investigation is launched.

Bespoke Advisory for Private Clients & Complex Structures

Beyond investigations, Pure Tax Investigations provides tailored advisory services for private clients with complex affairs. This includes specialist analysis and planning concerning residence and domicile status, UK property tax, trusts, and Inheritance Tax. The service evaluates each client's individual situation to ensure tax affairs are structured efficiently and meet commercial and succession aspirations, providing strategic advice that complements their defensive capabilities.

Automated Dividend Portfolio Tracking

Investors can build a dynamic dividend portfolio tracker in their preferred spreadsheet. By using formulas like DIVIDENDDATA_DIVIDENDS to pull yield and payment data for each holding, the portfolio sheet can automatically calculate projected annual income, portfolio yield, and track ex-dividend dates. This eliminates manual data entry and ensures the portfolio dashboard always reflects the latest declared dividends and share prices.

Fundamental Stock Screening and Analysis

Analysts and investors can create custom stock screens using the live data functions. By building a sheet with columns for various metrics (e.g., P/E ratio, dividend yield, payout ratio, EPS growth), users can paste a list of tickers and instantly populate a comparable analysis matrix. This facilitates rapid identification of stocks meeting specific fundamental criteria, such as those with a yield above 3%, a P/E below 20, and a payout ratio under 60%.

Historical Financial Performance Research

For deep-dive research on a specific company, users can construct multi-year financial models. Formulas can pull 10+ years of annual revenue, net income, EPS, and dividend per share data into adjacent columns, enabling the creation of charts and the calculation of compound annual growth rates (CAGR) for critical financial metrics. This supports thorough due diligence on a company's long-term financial health and dividend growth trajectory.

Educational Modeling and Backtesting

Students and investing enthusiasts can use the historical price and dividend data to build educational models. For instance, they can create a sheet to backtest a dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP) strategy by pulling historical prices and dividend dates to simulate growth over time. This hands-on access to real historical data provides a practical tool for learning about equity analysis and portfolio mechanics.

Defence Against Code of Practice 9 (COP9) Investigations

This use case involves representing clients suspected of serious tax fraud by HMRC's Fraud Investigation Service. Under COP9, clients are offered a contractual opportunity to make a complete disclosure of all deliberate irregularities. Pure Tax Investigations provides critical guidance through this high-stakes process, managing the disclosure, negotiating with investigators, and working to secure a civil settlement in lieu of criminal prosecution, thereby protecting the client's liberty and reputation.

Managing HMRC Compliance Checks and Enquiries

This scenario covers defending businesses and individuals undergoing routine HMRC compliance checks or more detailed enquiries. These can involve questions about tax returns, R&D tax credit claims, or specific transaction details. The firm intervenes to handle all correspondence, ensures client responses are accurate and legally sound, and works to contain the scope of the enquiry to prevent it from escalating into a wider, more intrusive investigation.

Facilitating a Worldwide Disclosure Facility (WDF) Submission

This use case applies to clients with undeclared offshore income or gains who wish to come forward voluntarily. Pure Tax Investigations manages the entire WDF process: conducting a detailed analysis of historical liabilities, calculating tax, interest, and potential penalties, preparing the comprehensive disclosure report, and submitting it to HMRC. This structured approach aims to achieve a final settlement and minimise the risk of a subsequent criminal investigation.

Resolving Complex Corporate Tax Disputes

This involves representing large corporates or sophisticated business entities facing complex, cross-tax investigations by HMRC's Customer Compliance Group or Large Business directorate. These enquiries are often multi-faceted, covering Corporation Tax, VAT, Transfer Pricing, and other areas. The firm provides technical analysis, project-manages the response, engages in specialist negotiations, and utilises mechanisms like ADR to resolve disputes efficiently and commercially.

Dividend Data is a specialized financial data platform engineered to provide institutional-grade stock market intelligence directly within the workflow of fundamental and dividend investors. Its core product is a powerful spreadsheet add-in for Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel that eliminates the traditional barriers to accessing deep financial data. The platform delivers over 30 years of historical and real-time data for more than 80,000 global tickers through a suite of simple, custom spreadsheet formulas. Users can instantly pull critical metrics such as dividend amounts, yields, payout ratios, growth rates, complete financial statements, earnings data, valuation ratios, and price history without requiring API keys, coding knowledge, or manual copy-pasting from external sources. Built by a dividend investor for the community, Dividend Data distinguishes itself with a permanently free tier offering 2,500 monthly credits, robust functionality across both major spreadsheet ecosystems, and a focus on the specific data points that income-focused and value investors need to make informed decisions. It is designed for individual investors, financial analysts, and portfolio managers who demand comprehensive, reliable data but seek to avoid the complexity and high cost typically associated with professional financial data terminals.

Pure Tax Investigations is a specialist advisory firm that provides expert defence and resolution services for businesses, entrepreneurs, and private clients facing scrutiny from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). The firm operates as an independent, expert buffer between clients and the tax authority, offering robust representation during all forms of tax disputes. Its core value proposition is delivering certainty, discretion, and commercial results through a deep, pragmatic understanding of complex tax affairs and HMRC's operational methodologies. The service is specifically engineered for those undergoing routine compliance checks, complex cross-tax investigations into large corporates, or serious civil fraud investigations under Codes of Practice 8 and 9. Led by Amit Puri, a former senior HMRC Tax Inspector with over 20 years of experience, the team leverages insider procedural knowledge to navigate the intrusive and high-pressure environment of tax enquiries. Pure Tax Investigations also specialises in managing voluntary disclosures through formal facilities like the Worldwide Disclosure Facility (WDF) and the Let Property Campaign (LPC), aiming to regularise clients' tax positions while preserving wealth and achieving finality. The firm's approach is tailored, analytical, and designed to provide peace of mind by handling the technical complexities of HMRC interaction.

What data can I access with the free tier?

The free tier provides full access to all of Dividend Data's 16+ custom functions and the entire database of over 80,000 tickers and 30+ years of history. Your usage is limited by a monthly credit allowance of 2,500 credits. Each data point retrieved (e.g., one cell with a price, a dividend yield, an EPS figure) typically consumes one credit. This allows for hundreds to thousands of data points per month, suitable for substantial personal analysis and portfolio tracking.

How does the spreadsheet add-in get installed?

For Google Sheets, you install the "Dividend Data" add-on directly from the Google Workspace Marketplace. For Microsoft Excel, you install the "Dividend Data" add-in from the Microsoft AppSource store within Excel. Both processes are straightforward, following the standard installation flow for each platform. Once installed, the custom functions become available in your spreadsheet, and you can start using them immediately after a quick account sign-up.

Is the data provided live and real-time?

The data is live and reflects the most recent information available from Dividend Data's providers. For market quotes like stock price, it is typically real-time or delayed based on the data feed. Fundamental data, such as financial statements and dividends, is updated as soon as the information is publicly released and processed. The average response time for a data request is 0.84 seconds, ensuring your spreadsheets update quickly.

Do I need to know how to code or use APIs?

No coding or API knowledge is required. Dividend Data is designed specifically to be a no-code solution. All data integration is handled through simple, pre-built spreadsheet formulas that work identically to native functions like SUM() or VLOOKUP(). You only need to know the ticker symbol and the metric code (provided in the documentation) to retrieve any data point.

What is the main difference between a Code of Practice 8 (COP8) and a Code of Practice 9 (COP9) investigation?

A COP8 investigation is used by HMRC for cases involving suspected tax avoidance or complex technical issues where there is no suspicion of deliberate fraud. It is a civil investigation focused on establishing the correct tax position. In contrast, a COP9 investigation is invoked where HMRC suspects deliberate tax fraud (fraudulent evasion of tax). COP9 offers the taxpayer a contractual opportunity to make a full disclosure and secure a civil financial settlement, with HMRC agreeing not to pursue a criminal investigation for the disclosed offences.

When should I consider making a voluntary disclosure to HMRC?

You should consider making a voluntary disclosure proactively if you have undeclared income, gains, or errors in your tax affairs, especially before HMRC contacts you about them. This is particularly crucial for offshore matters, undisclosed property income, or crypto gains. A voluntary disclosure, managed through the correct facility (like the WDF or LPC), typically results in lower penalties than if HMRC discovers the irregularities first. It also significantly reduces the risk of a criminal prosecution.

How can Pure Tax Investigations help if I have already received an HMRC Information Notice?

An HMRC Information Notice is a formal legal request for information or documents. Ignoring it can lead to significant penalties. Pure Tax Investigations can provide immediate expertise to assess the validity and scope of the notice, advise on your legal rights and obligations, and manage the compliant gathering and submission of information. Their intervention ensures the response is precise and does not inadvertently provide HMRC with grounds to widen the enquiry beyond its original intent.

Do you only handle investigations, or can you provide proactive tax advice?

While Pure Tax Investigations is renowned for its defence and dispute resolution services, it also offers proactive, bespoke advisory services, particularly for private clients and businesses with complex structures. This includes planning around residence and domicile, UK property tax, trusts, and Inheritance Tax. The firm's deep understanding of HMRC's compliance focus allows it to provide strategic advice that is robust and designed to withstand scrutiny, thereby helping to prevent future disputes.

Dividend Data is a specialized financial data add-on for Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel, falling into the category of fundamental and dividend investment analysis tools. It provides direct spreadsheet integration for historical dividend data, financial statements, and key metrics without requiring programming skills or API management. Users may explore alternatives for various reasons, including specific budget constraints, the need for different data points like options or macroeconomic indicators, integration with other platforms such as trading software, or a preference for a standalone desktop application rather than a spreadsheet add-on. The core requirement often remains consistent: reliable, historical financial data to inform investment decisions. When evaluating an alternative, key considerations should include the depth and historical range of the dividend dataset, the total cost relative to your data consumption, the ease of integration with your existing workflow, and the breadth of supplementary fundamental metrics offered, such as financial ratios and earnings data.

Pure Tax Investigations is a specialist advisory firm operating within the tax dispute resolution and HMRC investigation defence sector. It provides expert representation for businesses and individuals facing complex enquiries from HM Revenue & Customs, leveraging deep procedural knowledge to achieve commercial settlements. Clients may seek alternatives for several common reasons. These can include budgetary constraints, as specialist defence services represent a significant investment. Others may require a different service scope, such as more general tax advisory support without a specific focus on disputes, or they might prioritise a firm with a different geographical presence or a particular size structure. When evaluating an alternative provider, key criteria should include the depth of direct HMRC experience within the team, proven expertise in the specific type of enquiry you face (such as COP9 investigations), and a clear methodology for client communication and strategic defence. The firm's track record in achieving negotiated settlements and its understanding of HMRC's operational practices are paramount.