We are pleased to tell you that a new Enforcement & Compliance, Debt Management & Banking (DMB) Agent Dedicated Line opens on 28 April 2014. This helpline is intended for the sole use of agents with queries about DMB – and you can use it to get a priority service. The telephone number is: 0300 200 3887. Opening hours: 8 am to 8 pm, Monday to Friday. Continue Reading
It has been said that for the wealthy, IHT is a voluntary tax, and there is some truth in this. For example, if you have a large annual income, there is another useful exemption for IHT. Essentially, this says that gifts you make are ignored for IHT if you can show that: • you make them using part of your annual income after tax; • making them does not affect your standard of living - in other words, if you didn't make the gift, you'd be saving the money rather than ... Continue Reading
Peter Vaines of Squire Sanders reports on an interesting case involving an issue which HMRC cannot seem to stop getting wrong – and which hints at serious procedural problems in managing payments. My heart sank when I saw the case of Kestrel Guards Limited v HMRC TC 3324 which is yet another case where HMRC imposed a penalty for late payment occasioned by postal delays. This is getting ridiculous. The position is quite clear as a series of cases before the Tribunal have shown but for ... Continue Reading
Martyn Arthur, the forensic accountant who successfully represented the taxpayer in a Tribunal case which should cause HMRC pause for thought, reflects on the key flaws in HMRC’s approach. Preface – Client Confidentiality The case illustrated some very important fundamentals and in discussing it, it is important first to make clear that we always respect client confidentiality. Everything referred to in this article is in the public domain as ... Continue Reading
TaxationWeb's Mark McLaughlin is concerned that HMRC's increased use of benchmarking will automatically lead to enquiries for less successful businesses. I received an interesting email this week from Abbey Tax Protection. It pointed out that HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has a 'transparent benchmarking team', which has selected a number of trade sectors to test the use of 'benchmarks'. These benchmarks are used to compare the 'net profit ... Continue Reading
The Low Incomes Tax Reform Group believes that abolishing a compensation scheme for small employers faced with high levels of sickness absence will impact harshly on ‘care and support employers’. Introduction From 6 April 2014 employers are no longer able to claim reimbursement for Statutory Sick Pay (SSP), following the abolition of the Percentage Threshold Scheme (PTS). The change will affect those who take on a personal assistant employed to help them with their ... Continue Reading
Introduction All employers now need to send payroll information in real time. This is known as Real Time Information, or RTI, and has been fully operational for a year. Virtually all individual PAYE records are now routinely reported in real time, with the majority of employers finding RTI easy and reporting on time without any problems. This briefing explains the benefits that employers, HMRC and the Exchequer will experience as a result of RTI and how we are supporting employers as they ... Continue Reading
TaxationWeb supports a petition to keep tax law published and up to date. Mark McLaughlin has set up an online petition to try to encourage the UK government to publish up-to-date versions of its tax legislation, in the hope that taxpayers can get to see the law under which they are being taxed. Many will be aware of the legislation.gov.uk website. If you want to know what TCGA 1992 looked like more than twenty years ago, then it is ideal. But if you ... Continue Reading
Many will already be aware of HMRC's somewhat less than inspiring reaction to the whistle-blowing activity which exposed the 2010 deal to "forgive and forget" the interest on a significant avoidance strategy allegedly undertaken by investment banker Goldman Sachs. Invoking anti-terrorism legislation to access the phone records of employees and their relatives... not good. One might suggest that, if protecting the public's interest were truly at the heart of HMRC's executives' endeavours, they ... Continue Reading
Mark McLaughlin asks why the general public cannot easily access current tax legislation. Finance Bill 2014 was published on 27 March. It is 601 pages long. There are also 408 pages of explanatory notes. The UK already has one of the most complex tax systems in the world. The latest annual batch of legislation, when it receives Royal Assent, will only add to that complexity. However, that is not the only problem. Taxpayers in the UK do not have free online access to the tax legislation ... Continue Reading
