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In its press release Record Number of Employers Report PAYE in Real Time HM Revenue & Customs has confirmed that it will be seeking to extend the temporary relaxation of the rules which require PAYE returns to be made on or before payment is actually made, from October 2013 to April 2014.  This relaxation allows smaller businesses (with fewer than 50 employees) to make a single return on a monthly basis as reported at LITRG Welcomes HMRC's Relaxation of RTI Reporting by Small Employers. ... Continue Reading

PPR is a valuable tax relief and ‘flipping’ is legitimate tax planning. However, if used too many times or in quick succession, there is the danger that HMRC will investigate in an attempt to prove that either the PPR exemption is invalid and that the real reason for nominating the properties is avoidance of tax or that the owner should be taxed under the income tax rather than CGT rules as a ‘serial seller’.   It is a matter of fact whether a property is the PPR ... Continue Reading

LITRG's Kelly Sizer and Victoria Todd want HMRC to do more to help people to avoid mistakes in their Tax Credits claims. Distinguishing between ‘error’ and ‘fraud’ shouldn’t be difficult, should it? Like sheep and goats, they are two very different animals with different characteristics – error is a person’s honest mistake, whilst fraud is a person’s deliberate intention to obtain a benefit not rightfully theirs. Yet as we have already ... Continue Reading

Are we now obliged to pay as much tax as we possibly can, in any circumstances? Should we deliberately not claim expenses or tax reliefs to which we are legitimately entitled, to help shore up the country's ailing finances? It would seem so, according to the Chancellor Mr. Osborne, who roundly criticised Labour for avoiding tax and bizarrely, according to the Telegraph and several other sources, asked them to settle the supposed liability of one of its main donors, in a letter which was ... Continue Reading

Peter Vaines of Squire Sanders highlights some recent and apparently contradictory judgments from the Tribunals in his May Tax Update. Good News for Capital Gains Tax Incorporation Relief and Property Businesses... The Upper Tribunal have recently heard the appeal by Elizabeth Moyne Ramsay v HMRC [2013] UKTT 0226 in which the point at issue was whether a property, divided into 5 flats, was a business for the purposes of Capital Gains Tax - and in particular whether it fell within TCGA ... Continue Reading

A CGT charge may arise on the disposal of land. In order to calculate the capital gain or loss arising, a valuation is required where:   •the land was owned at 31 March 1982 (in order to determine the ‘base cost’ of the property); •the disposal was a bargain not at ‘arm’s length’; •the disposal was to a connected person;  •there has already been a part disposal of some of the land and the ‘alternative basis’ of calculation ... Continue Reading

Is the Public Accounts Committee deliberately steering clear of over-complicating tax matters, asks TW Ed. I suspect I am not the first person to have questioned the extent of the Public Accounts Committee’s (PAC’s) knowledge or appreciation of tax matters. One might wonder how its members can have sat through hour after hour of debate with some of the finest minds in the world of tax and accounting but still be asking the same obvious questions they were last month and the month ... Continue Reading

LITRG responds to Enquiry Centre closure pilot urging HMRC to cater for taxpayers’ and tax credits claimants’ individual needs, focusing on service delivery and not cost cutting. Background HMRC will close thirteen Enquiry Centres across the North East from 3 June to 31 October 2013, piloting at the same time a new “better and improved” service for individuals in need of extra support in their dealings with HMRC. If the results of the pilot are positive, HMRC ... Continue Reading

LITRG suggests HMRC should focus on reducing tax credits errors – their own and those of claimants’ – as well as tackling fraud. Introduction The Public Accounts Committee report on ‘HM Revenue & Customs: tax credits error and fraud’ was published on 22 May 2013. Ahead of the report’s publication Anthony Thomas, Chairman of the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group, commented on HMRC having stepped up their investigations into tax credit claims. LITRG view LITRG ... Continue Reading

The Low Incomes Tax Reform Group has issued a guide to enable taxpayers to check whether they have underpaid or overpaid tax in the 2012-13 tax year and take action. Background HMRC have started the PAYE reconciliations process for 2012-13, which will generate refunds or underpayments for taxpayers in receipt of a calculation – a ‘P800’. HMRC expect this automated process to be completed by the end of October 2013. Some of these PAYE tax calculations will now have hit ... Continue Reading