JD Sports owner heads list of the UK’s top 50 taxpayers January 27, 2019 Financiers, hedge fund managers and housebuilders dominated a new list revealing the UK’s biggest taxpayers, published on Sunday. The Sunday Times tax list, which also includes high profile names such as David and Victoria Beckham, estimates the amount of tax paid to HMRC by the UK’s wealthiest people based on publicly available information. Read more: The [...]
English gin makers toast boom in sales as spirits reach record high January 24, 2019 Surging demand for gin has led to a boom in England’s alcohol industry, which registered more distilleries than Scotland last year for the first time ever. Figures in the alcohol industry are hailing a “ginaissance” with sales of the juniper-flavoured spirit in the UK hitting an all-time high in 2018, as London gin bars and [...]
No Boris, springing aimless policy promises on the public is not the way to make change January 21, 2019 The tax burden in the UK is at a 50-year high, accounting for over 34.5 per cent of GDP. Nevertheless, MPs from across the political spectrum like to propose new and higher taxes – the implementation of which increase the burden on families, who are already struggling from Britain’s cost of living crisis and lackluster [...]
Editor’s Notes: It’s easy to see why Gillette’s latest ad was not the Best A Man Can Get January 18, 2019 The "father of advertising” David Ogilvy once said “I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information”. Were he around today he would have to concede that the current industry takes a different view. Today’s advertising campaigns are meant to be shared, reviewed and discussed whether they [...]
Parent trap: the child benefits system has ended up punishing the very people it was designed to protect January 16, 2019 For high-flying parents who earn more than £50,000 a year, the child benefit system will seem ridiculous. You go through the effort of applying for the benefits (over the course of a year, this amounts to £1,000 for the first child, and £700 for each additional child), only for the money to be clawed back [...]
HMRC claims its online tax evasion crackdown has clawed back £200m January 11, 2019 The government claims to have recovered more than £200m of lost VAT from overseas sellers since gaining new powers, saying its crackdown on online tax evasion is paying off. HMRC has issued over 4,600 ‘red flag’ notices to online marketplaces such as Amazon and Ebay since 2016. The flags, called Joint and Several Liability (JSL) [...]
City Moves for 7 January – who’s switching jobs at Cushman & Wakefield, Immunocore and Colliers? January 7, 2019 Who’s swapping jobs today? Cushman & Wakefield Cushman & Wakefield has appointed Angus Currie as an international partner in its market-leading London occupier representation team. Angus, who will start work at Cushman & Wakefield in spring, joins from JLL where he was head of south east England tenant representation. Angus first joined JLL as a [...]
From sugar to saving, this government is treating us like a nation of children January 4, 2019 The morning I turned eight, I woke up and told my father that I was “halfway there”. This, in my home state of Connecticut, was in reference to getting my driving licence, a process I could start on my sixteenth birthday. As a kid, this was the milestone that I was most excited to reach, [...]
Iceland to fight £21m claim that it pays staff less than the national minimum wage January 2, 2019 Iceland could be hit with a £21m fine after HM Revenue and Customs ruled that its Christmas savings scheme technically results in staff being paid less than the national minimum wage. The supermarket disputes the finding, which relates to a scheme whereby the company allows employees to voluntarily set aside money from their weekly wages over [...]
DEBATE: Should the government’s Making Tax Digital initiative be delayed? December 13, 2018 Should the government’s Making Tax Digital initiative be delayed? Suren Thiru, head of economics and business finance at the British Chambers of Commerce, says YES. The Making Tax Digital initiative represents a significant overhaul to the UK’s tax system, which could not be happening at a worse time for both business and government. HMRC already [...]