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The National Audit Office (NAO) published its report Tackling Tax Credits Error and Fraud in February this year; the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) heard evidence from the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and HMRC in March and their report Tax Credits Error and Fraud was issued last week. From a cost management viewpoint, HMRC appears to have done rather badly. It didn’t help its case by initially claiming to have slashed £1.4 billion from losses due to error and fraud in 2010/11, ... Continue Reading

The Chartered Institute of Taxation and Association of Taxation Technicians has published a webinar on PAYE Real Time Information, co-presented with HM Revenue & Customs and Saffrey Champness. The webinar is available to view for the next 12 months at http://lexisauditorium.com/stage.aspx?c=61c995e3-9bd5-4559-a30b-194d654454b4 Continue Reading

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has published a consultation paper National Insurance and Self Employed Entertainers, in which it identifies a number of problems with the current special NICs treatment of self-employed entertainers. In certain circumstances, self-employed entertainers are treated (but for the purposes of National Insurance Contributions only) as being employed earners, such that their payments might qualify for contributions-based Jobseekers' Allowance. The consultation broadly ... Continue Reading

The LITRG calls for Revenue Scotland to draw up a taxpayer’s charter that is enshrined in legislation, setting out the rights and obligations of taxpayers and the Government. Introduction LITRG welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Scottish Government’s consultation document ‘A Consultation on Tax Management’.   While LITRG is encouraged with the approach to tax thus far, they would emphasise the importance of understanding the needs of the digitally ... Continue Reading

There are certain types of gifts which are ignored for the purposes of the seven year period referred to above – in other words they are completely exempt from IHT and can never become an expensive dead goldfish! There is a £3,000 annual exemption for gifts, and if it is not used it can be carried forward for one tax year. In other words, if you haven’t made any gifts in the previous tax year then you can bring that year’s relief forward and add it to the current year ... Continue Reading

In its press release yesterday, PAYE for Employers: National Insurance Numbers without Suffixes, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has admitted to sending out a number of NINos without the "A", "B", "C" or "D" suffix at the end. Apparently this is occurring when: The employer sends an incorrect or no National Insurance Number as part of their Full Payment Submission under RTI, or The employer sends a NINo Verification Request HMRC has suspended the issue of NINos until the situation ... Continue Reading

Entrepreneurs’ relief provides relief against capital gains tax on qualifying gains made by an individual on the disposal of all or part of the business, the assets in the business after it has stopped trading and shares in a personal trading company. HMRC Helpsheet 275 has more details on the relief. Gains that qualify for entrepreneurs’ relief are taxed at 10% up to the maximum lifetime limit. This is £10m from 6 April 2011.   This is a very valuable relief and can ... Continue Reading

In the case Albermarle  4 LLP v Revenue & Customs [2013] UKFTT 83 (TC), the taxpayer(s) achieved a significant “double win”. The first aspect of the case was that of whether or not the LLP was a trading entity or merely a property investment business. The nature of the activity of course determines the utility of the losses that arose in this case: trading losses may be set and/or carried back against other income of the same/previous year, while property losses are generally ... Continue Reading

HM Revenue & Customs has announced a couple of minor changes to the Annual Allowance regime for pensions – specifically where there is an Annual Allowance charge because contributions are ‘excessive’: Where the individual elects for the charge to be paid by the fund rather than personally, it should not affect the tax treatment of the pension The fund administrator will have to identify the year to which the charge relates For further information, see Annual ... Continue Reading

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) confirmed today that it is working with the United States and Australian tax administrations (the IRS and ATO) on data which reveals extensive use of complex offshore structures to conceal assets by wealthy individuals and companies. The 400 gigabytes of data is still being analysed but early results show the use of companies and trusts in a number of territories around the world including Singapore, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and the Cook ... Continue Reading