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According to a recent article in the Financial Times, landlords are buying fewer properties than at any time in the past nine years. The restriction in the deduction of residential property finance costs for landlords (i.e. mortgage and/or loan interest) to the 'basic' rate of income tax taken with the increase in Stamp Duty Land Tax on non main resident properties (for dwellings costing in excess of £500,000, the rate reaches 15%) has no doubt had an adverse impact on the number of properties ... Continue Reading

Andrew Needham explains how if a business forgets to tell HMRC that it has opted to tax a property it can submit a ‘belated notification’. In order to recover the VAT on the costs of purchasing or refurbishing a commercial property, a property rental business will have to opt to tax the property and complete a form VAT 1614A and send it HMRC within 30 days of taking the decision to opt to tax. It would then charge VAT on any subsequent rental or sale of the property.   Forgetting ... Continue Reading

RSM UK's Jackie Hall thinks that better clarity on establishing whether someone is employed or self-employed should be established before rushing through the new off-payroll working regime for the private sector. The proposed changes will potentially impact any medium or large UK business, including charities, who take on one or more workers operating through an intermediary such as a Personal Service Company (PSC). This includes arrangements directly between the business and the PSC as well as ... Continue Reading

RSM UK's Karen Gibbons and Ian Carpenter warn of sweeping changes to how VAT will work through the construction supply chain with potentially serious cashflow implications for many small businesses in the construction industry HMRC has been publicising, with varying degrees of success, the launch of a new VAT domestic reverse charge for specific supplies within the construction sector, starting from 1 October 2019. The aim being to reduce the amount of VAT fraud in the construction industry (and ... Continue Reading

Peter Vaines reviews a number of tax developments over the last few weeks.   Corporate Residence - Where a Company Resides for Tax purposes   The case of Development Securities Plc (and Others) v HMRC [2019] UKUT 169 has now been heard by the Upper Tribunal. It was concerned with whether the Jersey subsidiaries of Development Securities Plc were resident in the UK or in Jersey. This is a familiar issue on which there is lots of authority.   It was all to do with the classic test ... Continue Reading

 BKL's David Whiscombe revisits a question as old as Income Tax itself. “Income Tax, if I may be pardoned for saying so, is a tax on income. It is not meant to be a tax on anything else.” So said Lord Macnaghten in 1900. ( London County Council v A-G (1900) 4 TC 265 ). Equally unsurprisingly, Capital Gains Tax (“CGT”) is a tax on capital gains. In view of the disparity between the rates at which Income Tax and CGT are charged, it is as well to understand which ... Continue Reading

Demand for new homes has never been greater and many homeowners with large gardens are finding that they can release capital by selling part of their garden to property developers or even build the property themselves. Whether the project is viable will be dependent on a number of factors, not least one of which is the tax position on the sale of the land.   Capital Gains Tax (CGT) will be the usual tax concern under such a project but in certain circumstances income tax may also ... Continue Reading

Mark McLaughlin reports on a number of issues raised at the 2019 STEP Annual Tax Conference. Date: 12 June 2019 Location: Leeds Speakers reported: Simon Douglas, Barrister, 5 Stone Buildings Emma Chamberlain OBE, TEP, Barrister, Pump Court Tax Chambers Dawn Register TEP, BDO LLP Russell Frimston TEP, Russell-Cooke Solicitors Robert Jamieson TEP, Mercer & Hole Philip Whitcomb, Moore Blatch Solicitors John Barnett TEP, Burges Salmon LLP Future Tax Charges - a Warning Simon Douglas ... Continue Reading

The way you run your business will affect the amount and type of tax and National Insurance that you pay. When deciding on an appropriate structure for a business, the tax and National Insurance regime under which the business operates is one of the factors that need to be taken into consideration.   If you run your business as a sole trader, or as a member of a partnership, depending on the level of your profits, you will pay income tax and National Insurance contributions (NIC) ... Continue Reading

RSM UK's Jackie Hall explains why some doctors are refusing to take on more work because of the effect on their NHS pensions. Back in 2015 when the then Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced cuts to tax relief for higher earners, no one realised the unintended consequences for our beleaguered NHS some four years later. The changes, introduced in April 2016, meant that anyone with income over £150,000 per annum would have their annual pension contribution allowance, normally ... Continue Reading